Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

When Buck’s parents called him back home to the palace, he was confused. He was three timezones away on another continent, in the middle of nowhere, and he hadn’t heard from them in months. Not since he packed his things in a duffle and took the first flight he could arrange out of the country.

When he forced himself through the heavy doors of his parents’ preferred sitting room and saw their carefully neutral expressions, he prepared himself for the worst. His mind frantically jumped from one horrible scenario to another, each more devastating than the last. Everything from an unexpected child to terminal illness to death to war breaking out—they all pinged through his mind at lightning speed. He hadn’t heard from Maddie in months, had something happened to her?

After all that, when his parents explained that he was to immediately pack his things and move to another country to marry a regent he’d never met before, the only reaction he had the emotional capacity for was a completely baffled, why?

The news seeped into his mind and started to solidify throughout the rest of the day; he was technically engaged. He was going to be married. His life as he knew it, the little bit of joy and purpose he’d carved out for himself, was over. All of the good he was doing as a firefighter, all of the amazing people he’d met and worked closely with over the last four years, all of the lives he’d saved—none of it meant anything because his parents decided he was going to be married off.

He’d always known he was the backup. The spare. The child to keep in their back pocket in case he was needed, but he’d genuinely thought—geniunely hoped that if he was good enough. If he kept his head down and stayed out of the papers. If he made his parents…if not proud then at least not ashamed. He thought they might let him keep the life he’d found.

But it didn’t matter how well behaved he was, he realized that night, staring at his half-packed suitcase laid open on the bed he hadn’t slept in for months. He would always be the screwup to them. The child they had to keep in line. The dumb kid who went out partying and crashed motorcycles and had his face splashed across the front of every tabloid in the newsstand.

So fuck it, he decided as he grabbed his jacket. If he would always be Buck Wild Buckley, then he might as well have some fun and actually be Buck Wild Buckley. It might very well be his last chance anyway.

*

Sometime around five in the morning, he managed to peel himself out of Casey’s bed and stumbled back to the palace. He gave the baffled night guards a loose salute at the front gate and made his way up the neatly paved driveway for what was probably one of the last times.

The news of his engagement hadn’t made it to the public yet and it felt like the calm before the storm as the sun slowly started to rise. In a matter of hours, maybe even within the hour as the morning paper landed on doorsteps, everyone would know and everything would change for real. Travel plans would be finalized, his meager belongings would be packed into boxes, and he’d never walk up this driveway in the morning sun again.

He couldn’t say he was going to miss it.

The pavement was always freshly cleaned, the edges maintained daily, the hedges along the sides manicured to the point of looking fake… His parents were always forcing life to fit a perfect, pristine façade, and now they were finally getting rid of the last stubborn flaw in the design. The problem child, The one piece that just never quite fit.

He didn’t bother stopping by his stale apartment to get cleaned up; he was a man on a mission, and that mission was the kitchen. He needed food, he needed water, he needed painkillers, and then he needed to sleep. It’d been a few years since he went that hard, but he didn’t remember the morning afters feeling quite this bad.

“Going out with a bang, huh?”

Buck winced at Bobby’s disappointed tone and redirected his intended path from the fridge to one of the seats at the kitchen table. He wouldn’t consider himself still drunk, but he definitely wasn’t sober either. That’s what he would blame his bitter smile on when he looked back on this later after a solid nap.

“Yeah, well they’re finally getting rid of me for good, so I figured I should get in one last night at all my favorite places. Give the local papers one last story to run.”

Over at the counter, Bobby’s face fell, which Buck felt both relieved and annoyed about at the same time. He probably wasn’t going to get a lecture while he was already so pathetic, but now there was pity involved, and he hated being pitied. Especially when he was fully aware of how messy and pitiful he looked. Messed up hair, bags under his eyes…he’d lost his nice jacket at some point last night and he was down to his wrinkled shirt that had a stain from some blue drink on the hem. He hadn’t even had anything blue.

“You’re not being banished, Buck.”

“Sure feels like I am.” He closed his eyes and gently put his head down on the cool glass tabletop. And then he opened his eyes again when that made everything spinny.

Bobby let out a quiet but still audible sigh, which was followed by the familiar sounds of silverware and mugs, the buzz of the grinder; there was coffee in his future. It wouldn’t help him feel any less awful, but Bobby made really good coffee. He didn’t use timers or scales and seemed to do it all instinctively, but it came out perfect every time.

“I know it feels like it is, but this isn’t a punishment.” More soft clinks of ceramic and metal. “It was an appealing offer they accepted, they weren’t shopping around trying to get rid of you.”

That didn’t change the fact that he was being shipped off to one of the few countries he’d never been to—one that somewhat recently had a war within its borders—to marry some guy he’d never met.

Or the fact that out of all the other royalty and nobility he’d met in his life, the hundreds of potential matches he knew would be advantageous for both sides politically if not personally—the only person who actually wanted him was a total stranger he might be able to pick out of a lineup if pressed.

Athena entered his line of sight, sideways from his slumped over position and carrying one of her unending supply of security dossiers. She took one look at his corpse collapsed on the table and sighed, much like Bobby had. It was true what they said about couples rubbing off on each other—not that Buck would personally know what that was like.

“I see you handled the news with your usual amount of grace and poise,” Athena said with a tolerating not-quite-smile that softened the blow of her comment, slightly.

Buck sighed right back at her, his rancid, hungover morning breath fogging up the tabletop. “I’m going to be a married man soon. That might’ve been my last night of fun.”

He watched Bobby’s approach without moving his head and gave him his best pitiful and grateful eyes at the coffee, water, and painkillers that appeared one after the other in a neat and orderly line in front of his face.

“It’s a marriage, Buck, not a death sentence.” Bobby nudged the water glass a little closer than the rest. “Feeling up for breakfast yet?”

Buck grunted because he wanted food more than anything, but since he stopped moving and had a chance to take stock of his angry body, he honestly wasn’t sure if it would stay down. But he also didn’t think he was capable of saying no when Bobby was looking at him like that.

“I’ll make you some breakfast,” Bobby decided anyway, and then he was off to throw something together, leaving only Athena to judge Buck and his cloud of misery. And judge him she did.

“Been a while since you went wild like that. I thought we were past this,” she finally said. She had that firm yet concerned tone that Buck imagined mothers used on dumb teenagers. His didn’t, but other mothers probably did.

“Didn’t really get the chance.” Between training to become a firefighter and Aid Alliance sending him to all kinds of farflung remote places that needed help, for the last four years his idea of a wild night was having exactly two beers with other volunteers at the one bar in town and then going straight to bed. Sometimes there wasn’t even a local bar and they just cracked open a six pack on someone’s bunk.

Bobby returned with a cup of coffee and a kiss on the cheek for Athena, and a significant look at Buck to top it off. This was starting to feel coordinated.

Buck sighed.

“We are past it.” He peeled his face off of the table to face them properly. “I’ve never even been to this country before, so I wouldn’t know where to go anyway.”

Athena raised a sharp eyebrow. “That’s never stopped you before.”

And she had a point there. Whether he spoke the local language or not, the one skill Buck had always been able to rely on was finding his way to a club or a party within three hours of passing through customs.

“I wasn’t publicly engaged before.” He took a sip of the coffee that briefly helped because it tasted amazing, and then immediately made him feel worse once it hit his empty stomach. “But hey, at least I won’t be your problem anymore.”

Athena didn’t indulge his pity party for a second.

“Oh no, you’re not getting off that easy. We’re coming with you.” She gestured between herself and Bobby, and he would be very grateful and touched later in the day when he didn’t feel like roadkill. “We’re all coming. Someone’s got to keep you out of trouble.”

“Maybe my new husband will.”

He felt Athena’s stare over the rim of her cup, while keeping his fixed on his own largely untouched cup of coffee. He wanted to drink it so badly. His stomach did not want it.

He knew he sounded childish and whiny, but he personally felt like a little whining was allowed when one was abruptly shipped off to another country like an ugly, unwanted vase that finally managed to sell at auction. What would he even go for these days? Youngest prince of a mediocre country who had disproportionately long legs and a short torso, mild wear to his liver, and a well-documented need for attention.

Yeah, the way the papers talked about him, it wasn’t very surprising that he made it to twenty-eight without a single marriage offer. Only a total stranger would go for someone like that.

Instead of indulging in his whining, Athena pushed her surprisingly thick security dossier across the table towards him.

“You should read up on the regent,” she said, voice neutral in a not very neutral way. “Since he’s going to be your husband, and all.”

“Do I even have to?” He hoped that came out more dubious than whiny teenager. “I know I’ve been kind of off the grid the last few years, but isn't this guy only regent because half the royal family got assassinated?”

It was kind of a big deal when it happened. Even the tiny local papers with a readership of maybe fifty people reported on it. Not very prominently, but they did.

It wasn’t every day that a queen and princess were killed by a sniper at a public event in their own country.

“I think you’ll find there’s a little more to him than that.”

She finished her coffee and gave Bobby a kiss before she left, and Buck squinted after her as she went. Reading up on his impending future was pretty much the last thing Buck wanted to do, especially after hearing that unreadable yet ominous tone in her voice. But Athena was also usually right, so he flipped open the folder and took a long sip of coffee to brace himself. His stomach still wasn’t happy about it.

He shuffled through the pages half-heartedly, glancing through personal history and assorted fun facts—apparently the regent did his own laundry—but was pretty confident that he already knew the broad strokes about this future husband just from what he’d caught on the news over the years. Most people knew the broad strokes without even trying. It was a classic rags to riches story that ended in enough tragedy to keep the world transfixed, waiting for what might happen next.

An ordinary hero who rescued the princess in the middle of a brutal war, and then became a fairy tale prince when they two fell madly in love. He married the princess, had a son with the princess, and lived happily ever after with the princess—until the princess was assassinated. And suddenly, the humble war hero, still recovering from being shot himself, was the regent of a nation until his very young son came of age to take the throne.

Staff Sergeant Edmundo Diaz.

His unsmiling official military portrait stared back at Buck from the front page of the file, looking very put together in his uniform and neatly combed hair.

Buck self-consciously patted down his own hair. His curls were still a mess after a long night of gel and sweat and fingers running through it, and probably alcohol too. Which made him feel shitty and immature in comparison to the national hero staring up at him from the photo. Then he felt annoyed about feeling that, on top of the hangover, so he flipped the folder closed again and shoved it to the side to deal with later.

How the hell his parents managed to get their last and worst child engaged to a golden boy war hero who valiantly stepped up when his country needed him twice…

There was nothing about Buck that someone like Staff Sergeant Diaz would want.

*

Leaving the only home he’d ever known was surprisingly anticlimactic.

His things were packed by professionals, but with how much time he spent living out of suitcases in any other country but his own, there wasn’t all that much to pack and they finished in a couple hours. There weren’t many goodbyes for him to say; the only palace staff he really knew these days was what was left of his own team, and they were thankfully coming with him.

By the time his parents finished their final lecture on his behavior abroad, the only visible remnant of him left in the palace where he was born and raised was a single portrait of the royal family hanging in the grand hall; stiffly posed in clothes he hated, not a hair out of place.

There were more traces of him in his favorite clubs scattered across the city than there were in his own home. Newspaper clippings that featured him stumbling into the street were framed and featured proudly behind the bar, old photos of him with other regulars over the years, drinks on the menus named after him…

He wasn’t sure how to feel about the fact that a tipsy woman who shoved him up against the bathroom wall on his last night in town and made a joke about giving him something to remember home by was the thing that actually made him tear up.

*

The flight to his new home only took a few hours, but the team spent all of it preparing for what was sure to be a cold, if not hostile welcome. Athena had already begun coordinating with the palace security team and her assessment of the situation there was…tense. An assessment that was well supported by the stack of local newspapers Chimney had gotten his hands on, each headline about Buck and the engagement worse than the last.

It wasn’t anything he hadn’t heard before. There were a lot of scathing comments about his partying and endless traveling, articles calling him a vapid airhead and a playboy, terrible photos from his teenage years dragged out of the archives and splashed across the front page. But while the papers back home had some affection for his antics, some air of yes, he’s the village idiot, but he’s our village idiot, the foreign press did not. Not even Chimney trying to soften the blow and strategically covering the worst of the headlines could hide that. They were absolutely ruthless.

They knew from the moment the engagement was finalized that they were fighting an uphill battle. Buck was taking the place of their beloved princess who was tragically and violently taken from her people long before her time. That was going to be a difficult sell with even the most perfectly handsome, charming, and upstanding contender with a flawless record, and Buck was maybe two out of four on a good day. The whole world knew it. His new home certainly did, and they made their feelings known the second his feet hit the tarmac.

Crowds of them were waiting along the road from the airport, shouting and holding signs telling him to go right back where he came from. A lone, rough-looking man stood on a downtown street corner, yelling about the Buckleys staging a coup through the marriage to expand their territory and take over. Someone threw a pastry at the car and booed. More people and signs were waiting for them around the palace entrance, many of those signs also aimed at the regent for replacing his wife so quickly, shaming him with her photo.

Even having grown up as a prince in the spotlight, having publicly screwed up more times than anyone could count, Buck had never experienced anything quite like it. His own people tutting disapprovingly over the latest party photos were one thing; an entire country’s rage and grief aimed directly at him was another thing entirely.

From the car, they were hustled through the massive, ornate halls of the palace, moving so quickly that Buck didn’t have time to get his bearings. Did they just take a right or a left? Was he supposed to be able to find his way back on his own? Each hall looked exactly the same as the one they just left, the only differences being the many portraits and paintings that he was moving too fast to even see, let alone use as landmarks.

Palace staff swarmed them in a modest sitting room he’d never be able to find again on his own and his team was immediately swallowed up by the crowd for their own briefings and discussions. At least a dozen people descended on Buck, all trying to simultaneously brief him on procedures and traditions, the order of events, and the schedule for the day as if he had any hope of remembering any of it.

He didn’t even get a chance to ask a question before he was being pushed into the waiting arms of a couple stylists he’d never met who started combing his curls into submission and blotting his face to make him camera-ready. They touched him up with powder and combed through his eyebrows while demanding to know why he hadn’t shaved, and then an electric razor was shoved at him too.

Having never been part of an arranged marriage before, Buck hadn’t known what to expect, but he’d thought it would be a given that there would be some time to actually meet his fiancé in private. Maybe even have a conversation before all of the press got involved. But that apparently wasn’t how things were done here.

No, apparently the royal family liked to make every aspect of an already uncomfortable and stressful situation even more stressful and uncomfortable. He didn’t even get a chance to ask for a drink of water before he was being put in a suit he’d never seen before and hurried back out into the maze-like hallways of the palace.

Normally they would get shepherded out onto a balcony for a formal announcement to the public, Athena quickly explained as they were swept along. But given the city’s less than friendly welcome and the country’s relatively recent history of assassinations, that particular tradition had been waived. Buck couldn’t say he disagreed with that decision, for both his personal safety and just…the less people who had to witness what was sure to be an incredibly awkward first meeting, the better.

Before he was ready for it, and with strangers smoothing down his hair until the last possible second, they reached the end of a hallway and Buck was practically shoved through double doors into a truly grand sitting room. A flurry of camera shutters went off the second he entered and he realized that the crowd packed into the room wasn’t staff or other nobility; it was the press. And it was only a lifetime in front of cameras that kept him from turning around and bolting from the room. Instead, he dusted off his well-practiced PR smile, straightened his shoulders, and made sure every camera got his good side at least once.

It was an instinct he wasn’t sure he still had after spending so many years in increasingly remote areas and largely out of the spotlight, but the confident and charming façade slipped right back into place like he’d never put it away.

With all of the chaotic activity, so many camera flashes and questions being shouted at him, it took him a few glances around the room to spot his fiancé. But once he did, it was hard to look away.

That was the man he was going to marry and spend the rest of his life with. However long that may be.

Buck stared at him for what was probably a beat too long, because yeah, that attractive, clean cut sergeant in his military portrait was in there, somewhere, but the man in front of him just looked…rough.

His hair was still neatly styled and his clothes were clean and fit well. His posture was rigid and military through and through as if he were preparing for an inspection. But he looked exhausted. Not a week of sleeping badly exhausted, but absolutely exhausted to his core. The dark circles under his dull eyes looked like they’d become permanent, and though everything about him looked upright and proper, Buck got the feeling that it would all fall apart under a stiff breeze.

Buck didn’t realize he’d stopped walking until one of the palace staff gestured him forward the last few steps to stand next to the regent for more photos that no doubt looked awful and awkward. They did their stiff and formal introductions to the room and exchanged the customary gifts on behalf of each country. One of the palace staff stepped out in front of them to announce their engagement with all of Buck’s titles and middle names, and the regent’s position as father of the king and his military rank. Simple and tasteful gold rings were exchanged.

And then it was done. It was official.

They were engaged.

And they hadn’t even said a single word to each other.

“You can, uh…you can call me Buck,” he offered a little awkwardly through his PR smile, still plastered across his face. He was trying not to make it too obvious to the cameras that he was speaking.

There was a pause, long enough for Buck to think he already ruined everything, before he heard the regent offer back,

“Eddie.”

*

If Buck thought they’d get some time to themselves to talk after that, he was mistaken yet again. What followed was hours of press and interviews where they barely got to speak beyond pre-approved PR answers to textbook questions. They did more photo ops by way of official tours and traditions in various official and traditional rooms of the palace. There was a cocktail party with the same press who’d been there all day, but also members of Parliament, various politicians, and nobles who all wanted to personally greet both of them.

It was a disorienting whirlwind of new places, names, and faces. At some point Buck was pretty sure his brain stopped taking in new information altogether.

He tried to stay positive, he really did. He kept his smile plastered on and talked to everyone who approached. He asked and answered countless questions he couldn’t remember five minutes later. He gave it every ounce of charm he had in his body, but he was years out of practice.

Every time he tried a lighthearted comment or a joke and got a polite laugh, it was immediately followed by backhanded to outright rude questions. What made him qualified beyond lucky genetics. How could he possibly hope to live up to the dead princess’ legacy. What rehab facility he’d been in the last few years. Whether he planned to clean up his act. If he was even capable of being faithful to his new fiancé. How he planned to help lead the country when he could barely lead himself past an open club.

Four years out of the spotlight, working on himself, helping others, doing everything he could to turn his life into something he could be proud of, and it was like it never even happened. Like he never left.

It was utterly exhausting, and the one lifeline he thought he might have—his new fiancé who was being equally bombarded with questions—might as well have been a brick wall. He talked to people and answered questions, he smiled his own PR smile that didn’t reach his eyes, but Buck felt like there was a gaping chasm between them even as they stood six inches apart. As the hours ticked by, that chasm only seemed to grow wider and deeper as Eddie got more and more distant, until Buck realized he’d already left without so much as a goodnight.

A staffer appeared from nowhere at Buck’s elbow, introduced herself as his personal assistant Jessica, and led him back through even more hallways to the private wing of the palace, which was less of a wing and more like half the fourth floor. She stopped in front of a nondescript door in a line of nondescript doors, handed him a set of keys, and left him there with a cheery promise to be back for him in the morning.

Buck looked down at the keys in his hand, then up at the massive portrait of a snotty aristocrat looking down on him. At least the mustache was memorable enough that he probably wouldn’t forget which room was his.

Buck’s new little apartment was nice, if sparse and a little cold. There was a little sitting room with a sofa and a desk, a nice bathroom with a nice shower, his bedroom had a nice view of the city with a full wall of floor to ceiling windows. A nice communicating door that went somewhere unknown because the other side was locked and his tentative knock received no answer.

The furniture was all very tasteful, the high coffered ceilings had intricate reliefs carved into them, and there seemed to be everything he could possibly need waiting for him to arrive. His few boxes of personal belongings had been delivered and piled up in the corner for him to deal with later. His camera bag sat on top of it all, upside down.

He hated all of it.

He’d been happy in the middle of nowhere, several timezones away. There was no public pressure, no bullshit, no photographers in his face or questions being shouted at him—the only camera was the one he was looking through. He’d felt normal, or as close to normal as a prince possibly could. He liked who he was when he was there.

And then he’d been ripped out of the life he’d built for himself and shoved right back into this world that he hated and that hated him in return. And for what? Clearly whatever interest Eddie had in marrying him vanished upon meeting in person.

Should he even bother unpacking, or would it all end up getting called off on account of a disappointing fiancé? Could they even call it off after it was announced? Would they spend the rest of their days living separate lives and sitting through miserably silent dinners?

No, he couldn’t go back to that.

He was done. No longer tired, just done.

He was done with pretending, done with smarmy politicians and nobility, done with all of the stupid etiquette, and done with the way Eddie barely acknowledged him as the night went on. If being on his best behavior got him the same reception as doing what he wanted, then why the hell shouldn’t he get to have fun?

He pulled off his brand new engagement ring and tossed it onto the coffee table.

His record for finding a party in a new country was about two hours.

Maybe he could beat that record.

*

It took a little more maneuvering than he was used to, to get out of the palace unseen, but even with the tighter security, his old tricks worked with a little adaptation and improvisation. Most security around palaces was designed to keep people out, not in, and he was able to slip through some of the same kinds of gaps he’d found back home in his youth.

Once he made it out into the city, Buck had to admit that his new home was beautiful, even if the people hated him and he, in turn, hated everything he’d encountered so far. It had old stone buildings and winding streets that gave way to wide and modern boulevards closer to the city center, and plenty of small parks nestled throughout so it never felt too crowded or claustrophobic despite all of the people out and about.

Buck didn’t know enough about the locals to tell if they were eating a late dinner or hitting bars and clubs early, but it wasn’t hard for him to find a small group that looked like they were going somewhere fun and fall into step behind them.

Back home, when Buck entered a bar, it wasn’t long before someone recognized him as either the prince or a regular and set off a chain reaction of cheers—or jeers, they kind of sounded the same with enough alcohol. Here, those who recognized him gave him a disapproving onceover and an intentional brushoff, and those that didn’t recognize him gave him a leering onceover and a shot of alcohol. And once he messed up his hair and wandered into the less brightly lit bars, he got the latter more than the former.

He stayed out until the bars and clubs closed, moving between groups of locals who took the clueless foreigner under their wing for an hour or so before things got a little too familiar and he moved onto the next. It was nearing sunrise when he made his way back to the palace and waved to the very surprised guards on his way in. He wandered back to his bland apartment, stopping a few more confused guards for directions along the way, and the second his head hit his pillow, he passed out for a solid few hours.

The sun was up when he pried his eyes back open and swayed into the bathroom to shower and try to make himself look somewhat presentable. It didn’t work very well; he was starting to feel like a corpse in the early stages of decomposition and the lighting above his mirror didn’t help.

Coffee would fix this, he told himself with more confidence than he felt. He just needed to find it. His little apartment only had a tiny kitchenette stocked with a few of the local basics, but if he remembered yesterday’s whirlwind walking tour correctly, there was a proper kitchen nearby. And in kitchens, there was coffee.

His apartment was in the private wing of the palace, Jessica had explained, one of a few for the royal family and close personal guests. There were some shared common areas, like a dining room and a kitchen, but non-essential staff stayed out. The Cabinet, advisors, aides—anyone involved in the political side of things were only permitted to enter by invitation.

Buck found a few of those common rooms along the way, poking his head into half-open doors in his search. There was a large, impressive dining room that looked like it was set up for a photoshoot in a design magazine at some point and then abandoned. There was a sitting room with a piano that was probably for entertaining, but had a similar eerie hush over it like it hadn’t been entered in years. He passed a small but full library he planned to check out later and some smaller sitting rooms before he spotted a tile floor through an open door.

Kitchens had tiled floors.

That kitchen was where he wanted to be. The kitchen had food and coffee. That kitchen would save him.

That kitchen betrayed him almost immediately.

“Have fun last night?”

Buck stumbled back a step at the four matching judgment stares trained on him from the island counter. There was no way they hadn’t rehearsed that.

The kitchen was otherwise deserted, but he should’ve known that if there was a kitchen available, Bobby would find it.

“How’d you know?” Buck shuffled over to an empty stool across from Hen and more importantly, next to the carafe of coffee. Bobby’s coffee. That alone was enough to endure whatever disapproval was coming his way. “How’d you even get in here?”

“We have an in with the security team,” Hen answered dryly, pouring him a mug of coffee, and their in added in the same dry tone,

“You’re not as stealthy as you think you are.” Athena’s judgy expression probably meant there were at least one or two of her security officers trailing him the entire night, and she knew exactly what he’d gotten up to.

He didn’t have anything to feel too guilty about, it was just drinking and dancing. It wasn’t like he’d run out and publicly cheated on his brand new fiancé the day their engagement was announced.

And yet he still felt guilty for some reason. It was one of Athena’s carefully honed skills.

“And you’re not as smart as you think you are, either.” Chimney swiped a newspaper from one of his ever-present stacks and slapped it down on the counter. Buck didn’t need to read the headline to recognize his own drunk and unflattering posture in the photo below it. He’d seen it in many papers many times before.

Chim smacked the paper for emphasis. “They already hate you just for being here, so you go out and get publicly smashed? Just call me next time, I have plenty to get drunk about!”

“I was getting to know the locals.” Buck pulled his coffee in a little closer; he wasn’t sure they wouldn’t take it away from him as punishment and it was his favorite roast.

“Not too well, I hope,” Chim griped with a finger point. “I’m still building connections here. I can’t just flash my winning smile and get stories pulled anymore—yet,” he amended with a grin at Hen, who shook her head and rolled her eyes fondly.

Buck squinted at him. “You did that before?”

“Constantly, so as bad as it was, just imagine how much worse it could’ve been.” Chim leaned in a little. “Remember that next time you get the urge to sneak out on your fiancé.”

“Yeah, somehow I don’t think he really cares. He barely even looked at me yesterday.”

“Yeah, we saw.” Chimney helpfully held up another newspaper, the headline of which was about their frosty first meeting, accompanied by a photo of the two of them standing together, totally stone faced and two feet apart. “The whole country saw.”

Great, millions of people got a first row seat to Buck getting thoroughly rejected by the man he was set to marry. Because it hadn’t been humiliating enough to experience it firsthand.

“What do you want me to say, sorry he doesn’t like me?” Buck asked a little pissily. “Sorry that I’m—I’m such a screwup that Mr. Perfect can barely tolerate my presence?”

The room went quiet in a way that made him suddenly very aware that he’d missed something.

Athena just looked at him, unblinking, and said without so much as a minor inflection of doubt,

“You didn’t read the file.”

Buck shifted a little uncomfortably, and not just because his head was feeling a little gauzy. Athena’s stare made anyone she turned it on uncomfortable, no matter how many years they’d known her. He’d even seen Bobby wince under the weight of it before.

But Buck felt like shit in so many ways and for so many reasons, and he refused to back down.

“Didn’t have to. He’s amazing and I threw up in one of his bathrooms an hour ago.”

It was supposed to be a self-deprecating joke, but no one laughed and loaded eye contact was made across the counter in various configurations as they all had silent conversations about him. They weren’t very subtle.

“You should really read the file, Buck,” Hen said, in her bad news voice she’d perfected over the years of being his doctor. And then Chim added with a shitty grin,

“And maybe pick up a paper or two. For someone constantly in the news, you sure don’t read much of it.”

“What’s the point?” Buck shot back miserably. “It’s usually about me and I was there for it.”

“Not that you usually remember it.” Chim pushed his pile of papers over to Buck and prepared to head out with Hen to get back to their work days. “I suggest you start with those and work your way back. You’ll catch on eventually.”

The top article had a table weighing the many accomplishments of Princess Shannon against Buck’s, and found him severely lacking in every category, even academically. She graduated with honors from a top university and got a Master’s in political science, while Buck had barely finished his undergrad. Her long list of charities and causes ended with etc. while his much shorter list ended in an asterisk, noting that his involvement seemed to be in name recognition only.

It was the last thing he needed shoved in his face this early in the morning with a hangover.

Buck pulled a face at him, but Chim just obnoxiously chewed his gum that Buck could swear he didn’t have in his mouth a second ago and winked as he backed through the kitchen door and disappeared from sight. Hen gave him a sympathetic smile as she followed, which didn’t help.

Now that the peanut gallery was gone, Buck sighed and turned to Bobby and Athena. They were both sipping their coffee like they had opinions but didn’t want to get involved.

“What am I missing?”

Athena busied herself with pouring more coffee into her mostly full mug while Bobby leveled him with one of his annoyingly patient yet firm looks.

“You have an opportunity here, Buck. I wouldn’t waste it falling back into old habits.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Buck asked, but Bobby just started gathering up the mugs left behind. While he was distracted, Athena took the opening to use one of her looks.

“Just read the file.”

*

Buck did not read the file.

His head was pounding and felt a little loopy every time he looked down. The last thing he needed was a drily written summary of how amazing the regent was to make him feel even worse.

He already knew the gist anyway. He’d been off in college when the wedding happened, but he did attend enough events at the time to hear the gossip. The princess and heir to the throne from a long and historic royal line marrying not just a non-royal, not a celebrity, not even someone from old money—but a normal, everyday guy in the military. Shannon had been famous for being casual and bucking stuffy tradition, but even coming from her, it was a move that raised eyebrows.

But, he reasoned as he put himself back together to face his packed schedule for the day, if Princess Shannon liked the guy enough to marry him and have a child with him, Eddie probably wasn’t a total dick, right?

Sure, their first meeting could’ve gone better, but they met surrounded by reporters and cameras and staff. Buck had grown up with that kind of invasive chaos and he still didn’t act like himself in that kind of setting. Maybe Eddie was just nervous.

He had to try to be a little more positive, Buck decided as his hangover started to subside. Of course he was going to be miserable if he went into everything expecting it to be terrible, and that wasn’t normally who he was. He was the guy who liked to try new things and meet new people. Why should this be any different?

He had a few meetings with Eddie on the day’s schedule, maybe he could get a better sense of who he was marrying when they weren’t being shoved together in the most stressful and pressure-filled first meeting ever.

Yeah, it would be fine.

His optimism didn’t pay off.

“The regent had a change in his schedule,” Jessica explained as she led Buck through the palace maze to the specific room he was supposed to be in, next to an uninspired bust of a generic old man. “I’ll be back in forty-five minutes to take you to the next one.”

And then she left him there with a room full of strangers, over and over and over again, in a different room each time that somehow looked exactly the same as the last.

There was an etiquette meeting that left him with a thick binder for reference, overseen by a massive portrait of an unnerving child holding a small dog whose face came out wrong in every way.

A security meeting that left him with a thick binder for reference, with a small, vaguely phallic, abstract bronze statue in the middle of the table.

Safety protocols under the gaze of a baroque man showing off his tights. Another binder.

An exhaustive overview of local politics next to a still life of food that made Buck realize he hadn’t eaten lunch yet. Another binder.

The entire history of the royal family tree with his back to a truly disturbing expressionist painting that made the hair on the back of his next stand on end. Another binder.

Another security meeting about security clearances and exactly how many Buck didn’t have, and how many he, as an outsider, would never get. Another binder.

By the time he reached the last meeting of the day, his leg ached from sitting in the same position for hours. He was tired, hungry, pretty disoriented, and he’d collected a sizable stack of binders in his arms.

“And uh, who’s this one with again?” he asked Jessica, who gave him a sympathetic smile over her shoulder. He probably wasn’t very good at hiding how overwhelmed he was.

“The wedding planner and the regent.” She gestured for him to turn right and he did, and the hallway looked exactly the same as the last. “I don’t think it’ll be too much today, probably more of a casual meet and greet.”

That was probably supposed to be reassuring, but it wasn’t. He’d lost count of how many people he’d met and greeted that day; he was totally wiped out.

But hey, picking out colors and flowers together might be fun, right? He and Eddie might even learn something about each other. Favorite colors, at the very least.

*

Jessica dropped him off at another nondescript office door in a hallway of identical office doors, and waved goodbye without any further instructions. There was a serene landscape hanging on the wall next to it; it did not reflect Buck’s current state of being or do anything to help.

He shifted his stack of binders to knock hesitantly and a cheerful voice answered, too muffled by the door to make out what was said. He guessed it was an invitation and opened the door anyway.

“You must be Prince Evan!” The woman inside stood, bowed a little, and reached out to shake his hand. She barely came up to his sternum. “I’m Martha Laurent, co-founder and lead event coordinator of Nouer Luxury Events. It’s French for—”

“Knot, I got it,” Buck finished with a smile, and shifted his binders again to take her hand.

“I should’ve known you speak French with how much you travel.” Martha gestured back to the small conference table she seemed to have claimed as a temporary office. Behind her was a painting of a very elegant woman reclining, totally nude. “Shall we get started?”

Buck hesitated, gathering his binders into a pile on the table across from Martha’s own sizable collection of different binders. “Um, shouldn’t we wait for Eddie? The regent?” he added, realizing belatedly that most people in the palace probably didn’t call him Eddie.

“I’ve been told he’s running late, but he’s done all this before,” she said with a dismissive wave, but she still waited for Buck to sit before she did. “We’ve got lots to go over, and the more we can get done today, the better.”

Buck could only blink at that. He’d said maybe five words total to his fiancé, and now he was expected to make wedding decisions for him? It was only the first planning meeting, but this seemed like the kind of thing they should be working on together from the start.

He didn’t get a chance to ask though, because Martha cut off him and his train of thought by dropping an incredibly thick binder onto the table. They both winced at the thud it made, and something expensive in the display case to the right rattled.

“First off all…” She handed him what looked like a complex grid of a calender with tiny bullet points crammed into almost every day. “Here’s the rough schedule of events you should expect.”

Buck’s eyebrows shot up at the full three weeks blocked off for more events than he could count. Some of them seemed to overlap. Some had to be written in the margins with arrows pointing to the packed full day they couldn’t fit into.

“The exact dates and times will probably change as we get closer, but for two weeks leading up to the wedding, there are mostly ceremonial events—the ball the week before, dinners, meet and greets, the tribute tour, the visitations—the usual kind of stuff, nothing too crazy or interesting.” She waved all that away with what was probably supposed to be a friendly and reassuring smile, but somehow it felt a little mocking.

Considering that Buck’s family did very few of those things leading up to weddings, that seemed incredibly crazy and interesting. That seemed like things Buck would need to know in much greater detail to participate in without embarrassing himself, his family, his country, and everyone around him as well. As a prince, he’d been to plenty of royal weddings, for his family and others, but he’d never even heard of half the things listed before him. And the ones he did know, he was totally out of practice with and would probably need a refresher, assuming they weren’t done entirely differently here.

If Martha saw the panic in his eyes, she ignored it as she continued rattling off information.

“And then on the day of, there’s the wedding breakfast, getting ready and brunch—” She tapped each bullet point with her silver pen as she read them off. “Photos, the ceremony, photos, press, cocktail hour, the formal dinner, outfit change, photos, after dinner cocktail hour, the formal—”

“Hold on,” Buck interrupted, waving his hand to get her attention before the high pitched stress scream in his mind steadily growing louder actually fried his brain. He had so many questions he needed to ask, he didn’t even know where to start. “This is all in one day?”

Martha blinked. “I’m not even done yet.”

Buck blinked back. “What more could there possibly be?”

Her face softened into something between sympathy and pity, which didn’t make him feel any better. “We’ll come back to the schedule later.”

She pulled it back from Buck and tucked it away in her binder, and then lugged an even larger binder off of the seat next to her. It dropped onto the table with an even louder thud that echoed off of the high ceilings. More things rattling in cabinets. So far nothing sounded like it was breaking, but if she pulled out a third binder, all bets were off.

“Now, if we can sign off on the final mockups of the reception hall by next Monday, we’ll be right on track for the month after next,” she continued. Her attention was focused on rooting through her bag as she said something about invitations, so she didn’t see the way Buck’s head snapped up in shock.

“For the wedding?” He probably just interrupted her, but he hadn’t actually heard much of anything she said after month after next.

Martha finally looked up at him and seemed confused by his shock. “That is why we’re here…”

“But isn’t that…?” He made a face and a vague gesture, and she politely raised her eyebrows instead of calling him an idiot.

“That uh—” He swallowed, trying to give himself time to scrape together some kind of reaction that wouldn’t reveal the alarm and panic expanding throughout his chest. He was getting the feeling that he was supposed to know all of this already. “That seems soon.”

If Martha picked up on the apprehension in his tone, she didn’t acknowledge it as she breezed along.

“Well, it can’t be within three months of the memorial on either side, so we either have to get it done quickly, or delay it by a minimum of seven months.”

A minimum of seven months sounded good to him. This was marriage, there was no need to rush into it. Especially when he hadn’t met his fiancé until a day ago, and his fiancé seemed ambivalent towards him at best. They could use a little more time to warm up to each other. Even the newspapers agreed.

“Can’t we do that? I don’t see why it has to be so fast, I’m not going anywhere.” Probably.

Martha put on one of those faces that Buck’s teachers used to make when he wouldn’t shut up, do his work, and stop asking questions. It wasn't outright contempt or annoyance, but a controlled patience with an air of will you just let me do my job? It had been a while since he was on the receiving end of that face.

“Given the current feelings among the general public,” she explained, sounding straight out of a PR meeting. “It’s been decided that it would be best to make it official as soon as possible. Ripping off the bandaid, so to speak.”

Well that hurt. Buck had never thought of himself as something for people to try to get over with as soon as possible. Though that did explain every failed attempt he’d ever made at a relationship.

“Not you personally,” Martha scrambled to clarify, putting her hand out like she would’ve laid it on Buck’s were both of his not clenched firmly in his lap beneath the table. “Anyone the regent married would’ve gotten a similar response. The princess was very popular and universally adored.”

He could’ve done without the reminder.

“And honestly, you don’t even have to worry about the details, we’ve got that handled,” she said breezily, flipping open the ominous binder but not turning it for him to see. It was more for her own reference. “You’ll just have to go where we tell you and smile.”

Buck stared at the binder and the two rows of color coded tabs down the side; venue photos, placesettings, flowers, colors, food—it was all in there and apparently already decided on, before he set foot in the country. Before he and Eddie even met.

“So this isn’t so much a planning meeting as an…informing meeting. You’re informing me of what’s already planned.”

“Pretty much.” Martha was completely oblivious to the fact that he didn’t consider that to be a good thing. Then she perked up. “Oh! You don’t have any allergies, do you?”

How thoughtful of her to ask.

*

Nothing against her personally, but Martha was the final nail in the coffin of Buck’s single attempt at optimism, and by the time he was herded from his apartment for his (thankfully) final event of the day, his optimism was buried six feet under with a bouquet of lilies to top it off.

Lilies that Martha picked out.

He had just enough time to shower off the stressful day and get dressed in a suit that was pressed and left out for him by some unknown and unseen entity during his many meetings, before heading right back out for yet another meeting with yet another group of new people. Last night was cocktails and snacks with a lot of press, nobility, and politicians looking for either dirt or a way to endear themselves to the latest chump. Tonight was a formal dinner with Eddie and the Cabinet of advisors and their spouses.

He was still a little shaky on the specifics of how the Cabinet factored into the government structure, but from what he’d been told they were a group of six advisors to the queen, some to her father before, and they were basically the ones running the country these days. If Buck wanted his life in this country to be a comfortable one, Bobby had said with an ominous tone, he absolutely should not piss them off. Not even a little bit. So no pressure.

Jessica met him at the entrance to the private wing and led him back through the winding halls, down to the grand dining room where she, once again, left him high and dry to fend for himself.

He hadn’t really been able to fully appreciate the grand dining room the night before; he was too distracted by all the new people, places, customs, and thinly veiled dislike being thrown at him all evening. It was definitely grand, with all kinds of ornate details on the walls and ceiling, historical paintings, floor to ceiling windows overlooking the gardens outside…

Buck kind of hated it.

It was beautiful, but it was sterile and untouchable, and it felt like every dinner he’d been forced to attend with his parents for the sake of appearances. It felt like home in the worst way. Like even if he smashed every porcelain plate and crystal wine glass on the table, it would all be impeccably cleaned and replaced by the next morning as if he’d never even been there.

They sat him next to the head of the table, to the right of Eddie who gave him a quick nod and a tight, forced smile and not much else. So much for getting to know each other.

But despite that, Buck was determined not to mess this up. He barely drank any of his wine, dusted off the formal dining etiquette he hadn’t used in years, and tried his best to keep his friendly smile in place as his dislike grew for every single person he was dining with. He thought the judgmental and gossip-hungry crowd of press and nobility the night before was bad, but it turned out the Cabinet was no better. He didn’t even know their names because they seemed to assume he already knew them and didn’t bother introducing themselves, but they certainly knew everything about him.

“So Evan,” one of them said, halfway through the second course. Buck couldn’t tell which one said it because they all looked at him in almost perfect unison. “How are you finding our fair city so far? I hear you got to see a bit of it last night.”

A few of them chuckled and Buck found himself instinctively grinning despite the discomfort. Don’t make a scene, don’t piss them off, don’t give them any reason to dislike you.

“Yeah—Yes, it’s beautiful. I can’t wait to see more of it.”

“Not too much of it, I hope,” someone else said, just quiet enough that Buck wasn’t sure if he was supposed to hear it. Before he could decide whether or not to react to it, someone else was talking.

“You seem to be bouncing all around the globe these days. Do you intend to spend much time here?”

And another added, “Or at least long enough to get through the wedding?”

More laughs from the table, another instinctive grin that Buck didn’t feel comfortable not giving them.

“Uh, yeah, I love to travel but I wouldn’t mind settling down for a bit.”

Although the way things were going, maybe the farther apart they were, the better. Maybe Buck could just get through the wedding and then take off and pick up where he left off at Aid Alliance. Having a prince off doing charity work on behalf of the country was always good, and it certainly didn’t seem like Eddie would miss him.

Eddie didn’t speak up for either option, but he’d barely spoken up the entire evening. He had his own PR smile on his face that looked a little rickety compared to last night’s, like he just couldn’t muster up the effort a second night in a row. But his lack of participation didn’t seem to bother the Cabinet in the least, as they carried on like he wasn’t even there. The entirety of their focus was on Buck.

“I doubt you could get away with much out there anymore anyway,” one of them laughed. “With the press being everywhere these days, you never know what intimate moments they’ll get photos of.” His wife gave him a little swat on the arm with a tolerant smile.

Buck swallowed down what he really wanted to say to them and plastered on his publicity smile.

“I was traveling for volunteer work, actually. I was working with—”

“Is that what they call it these days?” someone down the table snorted, and others chuckled and grinned.

The interruption made Buck falter, and he felt his smile fall a bit before hiking it back up in a deprecating grin. “Well, there wasn’t always a bar in town, I needed something to keep me occupied.”

A few of them laughed and a few of their wives playfully rolled their eyes. When Buck glanced at Eddie for his reaction, the regent was just watching the table with polite disinterest, and maybe a little disdain.

“I uh,” Buck dragged himself back on topic, trying to drum up an ounce of the enthusiasm the topic usually brought. “I was actually working with Aid Alliance the last few years. I was a firefighter.”

That seemed to pique some interest in a couple of them, get a few politely raised eyebrows, so he rolled with it.

“See they have this program where they train volunteers, and not just firefighters, and send us out to pretty remote—”

“Do they really let a prince do that kind of thing?” It took Buck a second to find the particular black tux who spoke in the sea of black tuxes lining the table on both sides. “Seems a little irresponsible. Surely there must be more important—”

“More irresponsible than what you did to the tuba at the last Independence Ball?”

Buck’s eyebrows shot up at Eddie’s tone as he turned to look at him, at his petty and slightly challenging eyebrow raise to prompt a response.

“Tuba?” Buck finally asked as the rest of the table snickered and groaned around him. The man’s wife put her head in her hand and sighed. No one elaborated.

“What happens at the Independence Day ball stays at the Independence Day ball,” the man reminded them all, looking very uncomfortable at being put on the spot. That comment set off more embarrassing drinking stories that they kept circling back around to Buck and his past exploits, even though he didn’t have anything to do with the Independence Day balls. He’d never even been to one of their Independence Day balls.

But he had plenty of experience regaling audiences with his charmingly unflattering stories and a bulletproof press smile with two decades of practice behind it.

It wasn’t until some time later that Buck realized Eddie had slipped out unnoticed.

*

Buck’s second night in his new home went more or less the same as his first: he sat in his apartment until he couldn’t take it anymore, then he snuck out of the palace and went looking for real people living real lives.

Unlike his first night out, he never quite got to the point of having fun.

Normally going out helped him put things in perspective. It made him feel small and insignificant in a comforting way; no matter how badly he disappointed his parents, how brutally the press attacked him, how much the royal PR team sounded the alarms about his missteps—the world kept going. People still went out and danced and drank and found connection. They talked to him and did shots with him and danced with him and, prior to his engagement, even kissed and had sex with him.

For every PR briefing that told him this story was going to be the one that ended him. That made him untouchable. That made him irredeemable in the public’s eyes…there was a stranger in a darkened booth with whiskey on her breath who laughed at his stories. A gorgeous man whose name he didn’t quite catch who pressed him up against the bathroom wall. Someone to reassure him that the tiny, frantic world of royalty and PR was just a tiny pocket of a much larger and brighter universe.

Maybe it was because he was in a country he knew he had to stay in this time. Or the double takes from strangers that held more recognition and disdain than usual. Or possible the backhanded comments of six judgemental old men that never quite faded from his mind, no matter how many shots he ordered. Maybe he was just tired and sad and the painful twinges in his leg were getting louder and harder to ignore.

Whatever the reason, it all settled uneasily in the pit of his stomach, and while in the past a shot or three of vodka could overpower that feeling, now they only seemed to slosh around together and make him feel a little sick on top of all the rest. Sweaty and messy drunk paparazzi photos were one thing, but drunken vomit photos were a low Buck had thus far managed to avoid, so he decided to call it a night and head back to the palace while he was still upright and coherent.

By the time he got back, he could no longer deny that he was limping. He could still hide it well enough that the guards at the front gate didn’t seem to notice anything was off, but he was a pretty pitiful sight once he finally made it back to the private wing. Why did his apartment have to be so far down the hall? Why couldn’t it be the first one, closest to the elevator next to the weird jester painting?

Actually no, he decided, as he paused to lean on an accent table that didn’t look too antique, really taking in that jester painting for the first time. He didn’t want to live near that painting, that thing looked like it could crawl out of its frame and under his bed on a full moon. He’d take the snotty aristocrat over that hellspawn anyday.

Not wanting to be in its presence any longer than he had to be, he stretched out his leg and mentally prepared himself for the last stretch to his apartment door. It was three doors down, he could make it. He could see it. He could see the bust with the magnificent mustache that stood right next to it. And beyond that…the kitchen light was on.

Buck glanced at his watch; it was almost midnight, but there were definitely sounds of cooking coming from the kitchen. Unless Eddie liked to wander the halls at night for a midnight snack, there was only one person Buck knew of who would be banging around in a kitchen in the middle of the night.

He ditched his plans of going straight to a hot shower and limped past his apartment to push open the kitchen door. Most of the overhead lights were out, but a few were on at the far end of the room where Bobby was at the prep table, cutting scones with a bench scraper to be baked in the morning. It was a sight Buck was very familiar with after many late nights back home, stumbling back to the palace kitchen for a snack before passing out.

Bobby heard him approaching almost immediately and looked up before the door was even closed behind him.

“You’re back earlier than I expected.”

So clearly Athena was fully aware that he’d left and had given Bobby a heads up about it. Or Buck was just that predictable these days.

Buck shrugged and dragged a chair behind him as he limped over to the prep table. He dropped down heavily and said on a sigh, “Guess I just wasn’t feeling it tonight.”

Bobby raised his eyebrows and Buck knew the look well enough to see it as a prompt to continue. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was feeling, so he stretched out his leg and rubbed at the sore muscles while he tried to put it into words.

“I don’t know, it was easier before. To go out and forget everything. It isn’t the same here.”

Bobby made a little face and refocused on his scones. “Is it the place, or is it you who isn’t the same?”

Now it was Buck’s turn to make a face. A frown, specifically. Bobby cut a couple scones and moved them to the baking sheet next to him, then paused again.

“You might not see it, but you’ve changed, Buck. You went out in the world and helped people, you fell in love, you got hurt—in more ways than one.” He jabbed his bench scraper towards Buck’s leg. “You aren’t the person you were back then, it makes sense that your old coping mechanisms don’t work like they used to.”

“Coping mechanisms.” That sounded like Bobby’s recovery talk.

“You saying you weren’t coping with anything before?” Fair enough. “Think of the last four years with Aid Alliance as rehab. There was no press, no parents, no public scrutiny—you could just focus on yourself and be the person you wanted to be. But now that you’re back out in the world and in the spotlight, you need to learn how to still be that person, even with all of this back on your shoulders. That’s where the healing really happens.”

Buck got the feeling he’d had that speech in his back pocket for a while, just waiting for the right moment to let it out. It was a good speech but at the same time…

“Easier said than done.” The person he wanted to be was a firefighter, off in some remote village somewhere, working with his team to help people. In reality, he was stuck in a palace full of people who thought he was a vapid playboy, in a country of people who would rather see him dead than anywhere close to their amazing wartime hero of a regent. He was pretty sure if he tried to save a local who was actively burning to death, they’d tell him to leave them there to die on principle.

Buck turned his gaze to the metal table, using his fingertip to drag stray flour into a little pile. With his eyes down, he could see Bobby’s hands reshaping the squared log of dough before he cut the next few triangle scones off of it.

“No one ever said healing was easy,” Bobby said with a shrug, and while Buck knew that was true and that Bobby was speaking from experience, it wasn’t overwhelmingly helpful at the moment.

“Okay, but how do I be the person I want to be when no one will let me?” He smashed his little pile of flour back down flat.

“You be that person anyway and make them see who you really are.”

Buck tried to picture himself entering the next Cabinet dinner in full turnouts.

“Somehow I doubt they’re going to give me many opportunities to do that.” He drew little X eyes and a deep frown. “All anyone wants to hear about are stupid drunk stories.” Half of which were completely fabricated by the tabloids years ago and were somehow still circulating. “I mean, who even cares about—”

“Who’re you guys?”

Buck jumped a little as he turned towards the voice, where a little kid was pushing his way into the kitchen. He was clearly in his pajamas, slippers on, his curls mashed every which way—probably from a pillow, so someone was on a late night joy ride.

“You must be King Christopher,” Bobby greeted, not missing a beat.

Buck was still catching up, because even though he’d heard of Christopher, and knew before coming here that Eddie had a young son he was acting as regent on behalf of, this wasn’t where he was expecting to meet him. In the kitchen, at midnight, while still feeling a little tipsy from what he’d drank earlier. And in an incredibly shitty mood.

“That’s me!” Christopher ambled over to them, and propped his crutches against the side of the prep table. Then he dragged another spare chair over and plopped down next to Buck. He looked down at the scones Bobby was arranging on another baking tray, then back up at Buck, and repeated his question, “Who are you guys?”

Well he definitely wasn’t shy, that was for sure.

“I’m Bobby, I’m the head chef for Evan here,” Bobby said with an inside joke smile, and nodded to Buck, who held out a hand when Christopher looked at him.

“You can call me Buck.” They shook hands like old business partners. “And what are you doing in the kitchen at this hour?”

Christopher sighed the sigh of a man with the weight of a nation on his tiny shoulders, which wasn’t actually too far off with him being the future king and all.

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“Well we can’t have that, now can we?” Bobby said with a grin. “I know just the thing to help.”

He opened the fridge to slide in the tray of scones, and while he was there, pulled out a few different ingredients—the only one of which Buck recognized was milk—and set to work over at the stove.

“What’s he doing?” Christopher asked not all that quietly, and Buck could tell from his shoulders that Bobby was listening and smiling to himself as he answered,

“I have no idea. We’ll just have to keep an eye on him and see.”

Christopher nodded with purpose, like he’d just been given the most important assignment, and kept his eyes glued to Bobby as he added tea bags and a few different spices to his concoction. He took it a step further by asking about every ingredient, which significantly slowed down the process as Bobby stopped to give a brief origin and history of everything he picked up. Bobby just seemed thrilled to have a brand new audience who hadn’t yet heard his spiel on nutmeg.

Even with the delay, it wasn’t long before he presented both Christopher and Buck with two glass footed mugs full of some spiced, warm chamomile milk concoction, topped with steamed foam and a single star anise pod resting gently in the center. He topped them off with a straw in each and gestured for them to go ahead.

Christopher looked a little hesitant and took a small sip, then made a happy sound and dove back in for more.

Bobby beamed as he started putting things back in their places, and left Christopher and Buck to their drinks.

“Did you just move here?” Christopher asked, his eyes on Buck and magnified to be almost comically big behind his glasses. This kid had built-in puppy dog eyes.

“Yeah, two days ago.”

“I’ve never moved before.” He sounded disappointed by it. “What’s it like? Do you have kids?”

“Um, well—”

Quick footsteps approached down the hall, and a second later Eddie pushed through the door wearing sweats and a t-shirt, looking both exhausted and frantic, those circles under his eyes on full display as late as it was.

“Christopher!” he hissed, heading straight to his son and immediately running a hand through his wild curls, down his spine, like he was subtly checking him over for injuries as he moved into a loose but protective one-armed hug. “What are you doing here? Why are you out of bed?”

“I couldn’t sleep,” Christopher responded matter of factly, grinning up at his dad with all his teeth. Eddie smiled helplessly in return, and there wasn’t an insignificant amount of relief behind that smile.

“How about you come to me next time, hm? Before you go wandering off in the middle of the night?”

“I didn’t want to wake you up!”

Buck looked away and met Bobby’s eye as he wiped down the prep table. He looked amused and touched, but also wistful, probably thinking of his own children—both those who were gone and those back home in their own country finishing up the school year. How many times did he make them warm drinks in the middle of the night, trying to convince them to go back to bed?

“You know I don’t mind if you wake me up,” Eddie said, righting one wild curl in the mess of equally wild curls. Then his gaze flickered up and he seemed to finally notice that they weren’t alone. He immediately stiffened, the softness in his eyes shuttering a little. “Sorry, he likes to wander.”

“Totally fine,” Bobby said with a reassuring nod. “I’ve been trying to perfect my late night chamomile recipe, and I could always use more test subjects.”

He smiled warmly and Eddie returned it, much smaller and with some hesitation, but he also didn’t seem mad about it. It was hard to gauge exactly how he felt about this late night get together, or about his son being given beverages by men he didn’t really know in the middle of the night.

“It’s really good, dad!” Christopher piped up, and carefully held up his mug over his head, which his dad steadied before it could tip. “Try it!”

“Yeah?” Eddie took a very tiny sip that was probably fake, but smiled down at his son anyway. “It is good. You feeling sleepy yet?”

“I could be.”

“You want to test that theory and try again?”

Christopher didn’t seem completely convinced, but he reluctantly agreed to at least return to their apartment. Eddie looked relieved just to get that far, so this probably wasn’t the first time Christopher had gone on a late night stroll.

“Okay, cold hands,” Eddie warned as he bent down to pick up his son, who laughed and squirmed away from the touch, and Buck just briefly caught the grimace of pain on his face as he lifted and got Christopher settled in his arms. Then he picked up the crutches left leaning against the prep table.

“Night, Buck! Night, Bobby!” Christopher called over his dad’s shoulder as they left, and Buck and Bobby returned it in unison, smiling after the pair as the kitchen door swung shut behind them.

Okay, so maybe the regent wasn’t a total stone cold recluse after all.

*

Buck didn’t wake up hungover, but he wasn’t feeling good either. His leg wasn’t happy with all the activity the day before, on top of all the recent travel and stress, and he’d spent way too long into the night strategizing ways to pitch firefighting as a good political and publicity move. So while he did have a few good arguments scrawled in a notebook, he didn’t have much energy to keep him going and he was doing his best to fight the urge to limp.

So of course he was shoved straight into a Cabinet meeting with barely a cup of coffee to brace himself. But he had his bullet points and a Bobby pep talk in his back pocket. He felt awful but at least he had a plan: show them who he was, don’t let them turn him into someone he didn’t want to be anymore.

He could do that. He had twenty-eight years of experience pushing back against people who wanted to do that. And he came prepared with arguments this time:

Like that firefighting wasn’t something the late princess had ever done, and it was a way to make it clear that he wasn’t there to replace her, that he wanted to stand on his own merit.

And firefighting would get him out in the city, interacting with locals and getting to know them. And he wouldn’t just be interacting with locals, he’d be actively helping them, which would make it harder for them to hate him.

At the very bottom of the list was his own personal bullet point that he wouldn’t be sharing with anyone: for twenty-four hours at a time, he could forget that he was back in a palace having everything he did picked apart, with a fiancé who didn’t seem to actually like him, and a lifetime of (at best) an ambivalent marriage stretching out before him.

Feeling as tentatively optimistic as he was, he shouldn’t have been surprised that it started bad and only got worse.

Not even Bobby’s coffee could save his mood, because gone were the backhanded locker room jokes and judgmental ribbing of the dinner table the night before. In the light of day, the Cabinet was apparently all business and all assholes. Not one of them so much as cracked a smile as they passed the morning’s newspapers around the table and tutted over the headlines.

His Royal Hoeness, one of the tabloids proclaimed in all caps. That was a new one.

“This needs to stop,” one of them announced as he threw down one of the papers. Buck was pretty sure his name was Jonathan. Johnson? And if he remembered his lecture on the royal family tree correctly, there was some relation. Shannon’s uncle? A cousin, maybe? Possibly a lord.

Or was he the chief of staff.

Whatever his name and title, the way he threw down the newspaper was all condescension with none of the underlying fondness and care that was present when Chimney did the same thing.

The front page was yet another photo of Buck leaving a club, this time mostly sober. It wasn’t even a particularly embarrassing photo—and Buck knew embarrassing photos, he had a personal scale and this didn’t even reach the first notch—but some woman happened to be leaving right behind him and even though they hadn’t spoken once the entire night, it was enough to make up a story.

“When you said you wanted to see more of the city,” another one of them started from behind an open paper, “we were expecting something more along the lines of a meet and greet tour, not another bar hop.” He haphazardly folded the paper and tossed it onto the table with the others. The headline was speculating about there already being trouble in paradise. The subhead gave their marriage six months.

Behind him, one of the several aides in the room made a yikes face and Buck really wished there wasn’t an audience for this meeting.

He wasn’t that person. He needed to show them that. He could be mature and focused. He could save lives. He could be someone to look up to. He could be the person he wanted to be.

“I could do a meet and greet tour. Or—”

“Not until we get this fixed. If we send you out there right now, security would be a nightmare.” Some ruffles of agreement from the rest.

“We need to counteract this,” another said with a dismissive wave at the papers. “Make people think there’s a heart of gold underneath the flakey playboy.”

“Flakey? I’ve—” Saved lives on almost every continent, in every climate except the arctic tundra, he was going to say before they carried on as if he wasn’t even in the room, let alone sitting next to them at the same table. It was a big table, it could probably seat twenty with room to spare, but not so big you could miss an entire person.

Eddie sat at the head of the table, but like the night before, he seemed largely disinterested in participating in the conversation.

“We need something for people to connect with,” one of them continued. Buck had no hope of knowing his name. “Give the impression that he’s invested in the country. Maybe that childhood literacy program Shannon was involved with. Or the orphanage outreach.”

That didn’t sound so bad, and he’d do it if he absolutely had to, but he had a plan. He was sticking to it.

“I do like kids, but actually, I was think—”

“One of the educational programs could work. If we get him out visiting schools around the country—”

“When he got kicked out of college?” A laugh. “I don’t think anyone should be following his example.”

How did they even know about that? Officially, he’d simply transferred to a different school. Unofficially, a meeting between the dean and his family had decided it would be in his best interest to pursue his education elsewhere, perhaps at a school with classes he would actually attend. Letting the prince coast through classes without showing up was, apparently, ruffling feathers among the student body and their families who donated generously to the institution.

So yeah, maybe he’d had a bit of a rocky educational road, but he’d stuck it out and graduated in the end. Wasn’t that a good example for anyone struggling like he did?

They didn’t give him a chance to defend himself, already moving onto the next suggestion.

“What about the veterans program? That’s a popular program and we could use the PR push for the budget negotiations.”

In his periphery, Buck saw Eddie’s head snap up.

“That’s not a bad idea.” There were only six of these guys but Buck kept losing track of who was speaking. It was like they were extensions of one singular, asshole brain. “We should be continuing as many of Shannon’s causes as possible. Use them to get him on the public’s good side.”

“Giving the veterans program to an outsider?” another mused, and they completely ignored both Eddie and Buck’s end of the table as they continued amongst themselves.

“I think it would help integrate him into the national identity, even though he missed such a defining experience.”

They made it sound like he missed a team building exercise because he slept in, rather than not being involved in a brutal four year war on account of not being a citizen of either country involved.

“We’d have to be careful. If we—”

“Hold on,” Eddie finally interrupted, sitting forward and more animated than Buck had ever seen him. It took a second but the Cabinet members did give them their attention. “I’m not handing off the veterans program to anybody. I’m the only one here who actually experienced the war on the ground.”

“And now you’re the regent,” Jonathan-Johnson replied with a surprising amount of condescension considering who he was talking to. “You have bigger responsibilities and a duty to the people of this nation.”

Eddie seemed to be used to the tone, not even hesitating as he responded, “Which includes veterans.”

“And everyone else as well.” Someone else picked up the counterargument. “This is exactly why this marriage is happening, to hand off some of your more frivolous duties that have fallen through the cracks. We’re doing everything we can to help you succeed, but we can only do so much if you keep fighting us like this.”

Eddie’s face shuttered.

“Remember,” JonathanJohnson jumped back in. “The nation is counting on you to right the ship, your son is relying on you to rule in his name. If you fail, this will all fall on him.”

The room was dead silent for a moment. Eddie’s face didn’t even twitch as he and JonathanJohnson stared each other down.

“Now,” someone else continued as if there had been no interruption at all. “The border rebuild could use some attention. We could send him out to the border for a tour? Something new to present something new?”

“No,” Johnson—Buck was pretty sure it was Johnson—immediately shot down, breaking his silent staredown with Eddie. “We can’t have it look like he’s taking credit for progress he hasn’t been a part of.”

The conversation continued, once again completely ignoring Buck and Eddie sitting right there with them.

“What’s the latest update on that anyway?”

“Last I heard there was a bit of a hiccup with local permits for the parks, but things should be back on track shortly.” Johnson turned his attention back to his list he’d been jotting down. “Perhaps the Osteoporosis Society? Shannon worked with them in the past, we should make sure they know they haven’t been forgotten.”

Buck couldn’t think of anything he cared less about than an osteoporosis society. He’d lent his name and face to plenty of causes he had no active interest in, everything from a soil initiative to his old high school polo team, but at least in his own family they occasionally asked for his opinion.

But here they didn’t care what he thought or what he wanted. All they cared about was shoving him into the footsteps of a dead princess whose shoes he could never hope to fill, even as large as his own feet were.

He glanced over at Eddie, hoping for some kind of silent commiseration at the very least, but Eddie wasn’t paying attention anymore. He was looking down at his clasped hands on the table, kneading them together in a way that almost looked painful. His back was rigid, his eyes vacant.

Without warning, he pushed back from the table and abruptly left the room, leaving the Cabinet, their aides, and Buck staring after him in a surprised silence.

“Figures,” someone said, followed by a few chuckles and scoffs.

*

Eddie’s abrupt exit made it to the front page the next morning, accompanied by an unflattering photo taken at some point in the past while he was clearly annoyed and being hounded by photographers. It glared at Buck from the paper Chimney held open as he read the continuation of the article, making him feel weirdly guilty and voyeuristic, even though he’d had nothing to do with any of it.

Bobby and Athena exchanged quiet glances, and Hen kept looking at Chimney and then at Buck when Chimney didn’t say anything. Buck didn’t know how to describe the current air hanging over them in the kitchen, but bated breath came to mind.

Finally, Chim whistled lowly as he finished reading and folded the paper back up. “You know, this guy might actually be more of a mess than you.”

Buck made a face at him, which was ignored.

“But at least we never had this kind of problem with leaks back home. Anything that happens here, the public knows about it the next day. I’m starting to get nervous going to the bathroom.”

“Pretty sure the public doesn’t care about your bowel movements, Chim,” Hen said dryly.

“They probably don’t care that much about the regent leaving a room either, and yet there’s a seven hundred word article analyzing his erratic behavior.” Chim waved the folded paper for emphasis. “This is exactly what happens when you have a zero statement policy. They’ll take any scrap of information and run with it because it’s all they get—I mean, there isn’t even an official response! There never is! To any of it!”

Hen took the paper waving in front of her face and placed it on the other side of the island, well out of his reach. “And it isn’t your job to worry about any of that, so you can calm down and eat your breakfast.”

Chimney picked up his fork, but he didn’t start eating. It was just another thing for him to wave around while he continued his rant.

“Except I do have to worry about it, because all of this palace incompetence is making me look just as incompetent as they are. What do you think happens to Buck’s reputation when the regent’s reputation tanks?” He didn’t wait for an answer or even seem to notice everyone exchanging familiar looks around him. “That’s right, it tanks. And then mine tanks, and journalists don’t want to talk to me, and there’s no recovering from that!”

He finally stabbed his eggs as he fixed Buck with a slightly unhinged glare. “Keep that in mind next time you sneak out at night.”

Buck sat back, frowning. “Why am I the one getting lectured? The article wasn’t even about me.”

Another fork stab, this time at Buck, with the eggs still stabbed onto the tines. “This time! But I can’t go lecture the regent or the press secretary, and if this keeps up, then we’ll have to work extra hard to make you look extra fun and likable.”

“Well good luck with that,” Buck shot back. “The Cabinet already tried and decided I’m too much of a failure.”

The meeting hadn’t lasted much longer after Eddie left, but they were efficient and quickly blew through the bulk of Buck’s known character defects and exactly how those defects ruined every one of their plans. He’d halfheartedly tried to get in at least one of his arguments for firefighting and they hadn’t outright said he was an idiot for trying, but their exact words were we’ll run this by the press office and circle back later, which he was pretty sure meant get packing, we’re calling this whole thing off.

He was staring down at his coffee but he could feel them all exchanging glances in the silence that followed for just a beat too long.

“Well the Cabinet doesn’t have my quick wit and charming smile,” Chimney finally said, and Buck looked up in time to see him downing the rest of his coffee. “And with that, I have plans to make and people to see.”

He gathered up his papers, nodded to the group as a whole, and headed out.

Hen followed shortly after, reminding Buck that they had an appointment scheduled later, and Athena was right behind her. She downed the rest of her coffee in one go and put her hand on Bobby’s arm. “I have a security briefing to get ready for. Still on for dinner tonight?”

Bobby beamed at her. “Of course. I’ll see you at home.”

They kissed, quick but full of love, and she left Buck and Bobby as the last two remaining.

This was coordinated.

This was a Talk.

“Okay, what is it?”

Bobby raised his eyebrows, trying to look innocent and failing miserably.

“None of them were very subtle, just say it.”

His eyebrows fell and he nodded, dropping the act. “Couldn’t help but notice that you seem even more pessimistic since our last talk.”

Buck gave him a flat look and waved to encompass everything that was just discussed.

“Cabinet meeting went that badly?”

“Worse, I think.”

Bobby topped up Buck’s coffee first, then his own. “Want to talk about it?”

Buck took a sip of his fresh coffee while he thought of how exactly to put that disaster of a meeting into words. It was almost a blur, making it difficult to pick out exactly what about it made him feel so awful.

“I tried to do what you said, show them who I really am, but they weren’t interested.” That was the cleanest summary he could come up with in the moment, but thinking about it again brought all of the frustration bubbling back up to the surface.

“I mean, they didn’t even listen to me! They kept talking about giving me orphans and veterans—” Bobby frowned. “But they didn’t even give me a chance to talk about firefighting, or all the training I did or people I could help, and that Johnson guy—”

“Buck,” Bobby interrupted before he could ramp up too quickly. “Did I say you should go be a firefighter?”

The question was so unexpected and caught him so off guard that he stopped talking, trying to redirect from the righteous speech he might’ve been fuming over as he fell asleep the night before.

“Um, what?”

“Did I tell you to be a firefighter?”

Thinking back to their conversation the night before last…he couldn’t remember Bobby saying those words exactly, no. He’d also been a little tipsy at the time.

Bobby didn’t wait for a response.

“If you think firefighting is what you need to be the person you want to be, then I won’t stop you. Go find the nearest station and put in an application. But you don’t have to be putting out fires to be the man I saw you grow into.”

That sounded very nice, but that didn’t really help him figure out what he should do.

“What else can I do? Smile and wave? Visit an orphanage once for a photo op and never go back?” He stared down at his coffee mug, tracing the edge of the handle with his finger. “I spent years doing that and I don’t want to go back.”

“Then let’s find something different. What did you like about yourself back at Aid Alliance?”

That was a hell of a question so early in the morning. And so much of it was wrapped up in not just the firefighting, but the people. Abby.

He knew he liked who he was when he was in a relationship, happy and settled with Abby and being able to hold her when she needed it. Make her laugh when she was sad. It felt good to be the person she could rely on, after so many years being known as the royal flake.

It felt good being someone his team could rely on. They were all trained the same way and could trust each other to pull their weight, and he knew he was included in that. He felt confident when he was there. Stable. He could fall asleep at night knowing he’d done something tangible with his own two hands to help people.

“I don’t know,” he shrugged, because how could he put all of that into words? “Helping people. Working with a team. Feeling like I knew what I was doing.”

“Well you don’t have to be pulling people out of burning buildings to help people. You could help even more people by working with these programs and charities.”

Yeah, his mind knew that money went a long way and he had a face that could raise money, but in his heart…

“It just doesn’t feel real, you know?” Spending a night schmoozing with nobility for donations followed by a handwritten form letter of thanks from the cause of the week. “No matter how many charity galas I attend or how much money I raise, it’s just—” he waved vaguely “—gone. I didn’t do it.”

Bobby nodded, thinking for a moment. “Well then I guess we’ll just have to find you something more hands on.”

*

Martha was back in her borrowed office with her binders spread out across the table and the reclining nude behind her. Buck found himself wondering if she left it all there between their meetings, or if she lugged all of that in from her car again. She was petite, but she was wearing another loose but chic sweater; it could be hiding some muscles, maybe she was ripped. From carrying so many binders.

He was distracting himself.

Bobby said to push back and show them who he really was. Make them see him and not the ghost of Shannon. This wedding wasn’t happening without him, and he was totally prepared to face down Martha and make his opinions known for his own wedding. He was ready; he’d prepared for this.

And then he was immediately thrown off when Eddie followed him into the room just a couple minutes later. Buck honestly hadn’t been expecting him to show up, and even Martha seemed surprised as she shot back up to her feet.

“Sorry I missed the last one,” Eddie said a little cagily, glancing between the two of them. “I got stuck in a meeting.”

Martha waved away his apology. “That’s fine, you probably know most of it anyway.”

He hesitated for a second, hand on the back of his chair as he looked at her, but Martha was back to sorting her many, many documents and lists and diagrams in her many, many binders. He briefly glanced at Buck, then finally sat down with one empty chair between them.

Once they both were seated, Martha sat as well.

“Here’s the general schedule that Buck and I went over last time.” She pushed some familiar papers over to Eddie, who blinked at them with a small frown but turned them the right way to look them over. “I don’t think any of that will be new to you, but it’s always nice to have a reference.”

Eddie didn’t move or react to the many, many events, but he also didn’t look unfazed by them either. Something about the way his head ticked to the side and his eyes briefly looked up at an oblivious Martha set off a warning bell in the back of Buck’s mind. The way he’d abruptly up and left the Cabinet meeting was still fresh.

“Now that you’re both here, we can get into the fun stuff!” Martha flipped open one of her many binders to some page and turned it around to push over so they could look.

In their last meeting, she’d shown Buck some general ideas and inspiration, the moodboard they’d come up with, and just enough for him to be pretty sure he wouldn’t like most of it. She had apparently been saving all of the details and specifics for the big reveal with both of them, and boy, did it all get specific.

Just the page they were looking at was a grid of photos of place settings, each example just slightly different from the last but all basically the exact same arrangements. It was like a bad game of spot the difference, except the only way he knew for sure that they were different was the ID codes underneath each photo. And somehow the fact that they were all arranged by numerical codes just made it that much more intimidating.

It was…a lot.

“We weren’t the ones who planned the last royal marriage, but we used it as a guide,” Martha continued. She was either oblivious to the silence on the other side of the table or powering through it anyway.

Because yes, Buck was royalty. He’d grown up as a prince in a palace and saw more than his fair share of ostentatious wealth. But he’d also spent the last several years traveling all over the world, often in very un-royal conditions. Now even these objectively tasteful displays of wealth and power just looked…tacky. It was all too much. Too big. Too…gold.

There was a lot of gold.

Tasteful gold, but so much gold.

Buck wasn’t sure how to react without offending Martha or even what he was supposed to do with the photos presented to them, so he didn’t say anything. He was also waiting to see how Eddie would react to all of it. Was this exactly what he expected and what he wanted, or would he push back? He had no idea what his own fiancé liked, and he was fully aware of how wrong that felt.

The three of them sat in an anticipatory silence, probably all for different reasons. Martha was definitely expecting approval, if her badly hidden eager smile was anything to go by.

Buck knew what he was hoping for.

Eddie was harder to read.

“This looks…familiar,” he finally said in a careful tone, flipping through a few more sections of the binder. Each section contained more of the same amount of gold and shades of blue from the royal coat of arms.

“Well, it’s a royal wedding,” Martha laughed like they were in on the joke. “There’s only so much we can change. A lot of it has to be done in a specific way.”

Eddie raised his eyebrows as he finally looked up at her. “The colors, flowers, music, decorations, and food all have to be exactly the same?”

For the first time ever, Martha seemed to realize Eddie wasn’t happy about what she’d planned. She glanced over at Buck—who fought the instinctive urge to smile and make her feel better—and then back and forth between the two of them a few more times.

“They’re traditional,” she explained, with the first touch of uncertainty in her voice. “They represent the royal family, the country, its history…they have to be represented. There are very specific guidelines.”

Eddie’s face didn’t change, so Buck jumped in as nicely as he could.

“Okay, but there’s two royal families being represented here.” Not that he really cared about representing his family, but clearly something about the decor needed to change. “Two countries, two histories. Can’t we change things up and find a middle ground somewhere?”

“And I’m not even a royal,” Eddie added. “Hell, I’m just a placeholder. There’s no reason for any of this.” He waved vaguely at the binder and sat back in his chair like he wanted to be as far from it as possible.

Martha either wasn’t getting it or she was willfully ignoring what they were saying.

“But it’s a royal wedding. There are certain requirements that need to be met.”

Buck could hear Eddie’s deep breath even with the seat between them, but before he could think of what to say to hopefully defuse the growing tension, Eddie continued.

“And what I’m saying is that I’m not royal.” When Buck glanced over, he had one of those slightly manic smiles people wear when they’re trying to defuse their own anger. “We don’t need a full royal wedding because I’m not the king. None of this is required for a regent.”

Martha seemed somewhat hesitant to correct him, but once she started, she didn’t hold back.

“You’re the father of the king who won’t be old enough to rule for over a decade. You might not wear the crown, but you are the face of this country.” Buck could feel Eddie bristling without looking at him, how was Martha not seeing the warning signs? “There are certain obligations a leader has to fulfill, including honoring the country and its traditions, and respecting the standing and expectations of our allies who will be invited to attend.”

Yeah, this meeting was going south fast.

“There’s a tradition we have to honor,” Martha continued, still somehow not seeing it. “A decade is a long time, and diplomatic relationships have to be maintained. You don’t want your wedding to spit in the face of—”

“I don’t want a wedding at all!” Eddie burst out, then seemed to immediately regret it, closing off and glancing at Buck uncomfortably in the sudden silence that followed.

Martha’s eyebrows crept up as she composed herself and neatened her stack of paper, keeping her eyes laser focused on her hands. She clearly had no idea how to proceed, and honestly neither did Buck.

“Can we stop for today?” Eddie asked after a moment, much quieter, but no less on edge. He looked tense enough to snap.

Buck could relate, as Eddie quickly left and Martha awkwardly made mindless conversation as she packed everything up.

The only reason Buck was here was because Eddie reached out to arrange a marriage. So if he didn’t like Buck and he didn’t even want to get married, then what the hell was the point of Buck being there at all?

*

By the time his scheduled appointment with Hen rolled around a couple hours later, Buck already had half of his belongings packed back up in the boxes he’d barely begun to take them out of.

She took one look at him and knew it.

“Okay, hop up.” She patted the padded table with the fond resignation of years of experience dealing with him. “What’s going on?”

Buck did hop up. “Eddie hates me.”

Hen paused in her preparations to give him a long, dubious look. “You guys met each other like three days ago.”

“And he already hates me.”

Her dubious expression didn’t change. “Explain.”

He did, as much as he could remember of that disaster of a meeting and Eddie’s reaction before he made another quick exit. It seemed to be a recurring theme with the regent.

Hen listened to him, nodding slightly as she listened to the facts, and then she did the last thing he expected her to do: she dismissed it.

“I wouldn’t take it personally.”

Buck gaped at her. Of all people, he thought for sure she’d understand.

“How can I not? He wanted to get married up until the second he met me. It doesn’t get much more personal than that.”

She shrugged. “You don’t want to marry him either.”

She wasn’t getting it.

“Yeah, but he’s the one who started all of this. I’m only here because my parents accepted his offer.”

“Was it actually his offer?” She gestured for him to lie down, but she was already continuing before he could figure out where exactly she was going with this. “I don’t know the guy, but if I lost Karen like that? There’s no way I’d be willingly shopping around for a new spouse a year and a half later.”

Buck glanced back over his shoulder, now lying on his stomach. Hen was rubbing her hands together, warming them up, and giving him one of her looks that said a lot. He was pretty sure this one was calling him a self-centered idiot.

Point taken. He knew exactly how much pressure was on royalty to do what was expected whether they wanted to or not, especially those on or in line for the throne. Eddie might’ve been the regent and not actually in the line of succession, but the king was all of seven years old so like Martha said, short of a major political shakeup, Eddie was going to be in charge for a long time.

Buck sighed, dropping his head back down on the table. “So I should cut him some slack and get out of my own feelings about it?”

She shrugged again as she squeezed massage cream into her hand. “You can feel however you want to feel. You’re the one who had your life uprooted to come here, so if you’re pissed, then be pissed. Just remember that you’re not the only one with stuff going on.”

That made his mind wander back to that big dossier Athena had given him on Eddie. That would probably give him some insight into whatever the hell was going on with his own fiancé. Athena had a way of finding out all kinds of details about a person.

He forced his mind away from that thought. He never enjoyed it when strangers knew intimate details of his life and he knew from personal experience that anyone could look awful on paper. If he wanted Eddie to look past his own dossier that he no doubt received before Buck arrived, he would have to do the same for him.

Hen began the usual routine: a quick massage on his leg to ease him into it, followed by stretches that always ended up hurting more than he expected, and then a more intensive massage to keep things loose and relaxed. She worked in silence for the first part, only breaking it to tell him to flip over.

Then, just when she’d lulled him into letting his guard down,

“You’re not going to run again, are you?”

He blinked his eyes open, having let them fall closed at some point.

“Probably couldn’t even if I wanted to,” he mumbled, and gestured loosely to his leg. Hen dug in a little harder in warning.

“Don’t be a smartass, you know what I mean.” He waited for her to elaborate anyway. He wasn’t going to get himself in trouble here. “I mean all of the traveling and the firefighting. Constantly on the move without putting down roots anywhere. Leaving when things get rough.”

Buck winced as she pushed his leg up into one of the stretches he was supposed to do every day but hadn’t done in weeks.

"Why should I stay somewhere I don't like? Especially when no one here likes me either.”

Hen held his leg there through the pain, and he knew it was the proper way to do the stretch, but it still felt like punishment. She pinned him with an unimpressed look while he couldn’t run away.

“Because you can’t expect any place to be exactly what you want and need from the second you set foot in it,” she explained…mostly patiently. It also kind of sounded like she wanted to hit him. “Remember how bitter and angry you were when your parents first sent you off to Aid Alliance? Because I sure do.”

He winced, and this time it wasn’t from the stretch.

Yeah, he hadn’t been in the best place back then. Angry, lonely, already feeling abandoned and then shipped off overseas by his parents after one scandal too many, like he was a troublemaking teenager and not a twenty-four year old adult. Looking back on it, they might’ve had a point.

“You know why you were so happy there?” she continued without waiting for him to respond. “It’s because you stayed. You got to know people, you let yourself settle and grow. If you go right back to taking off the second things look like they might start going south, you’re never going to find that again."

“I wouldn’t need to find it again if I could go back to Aid Alliance,” he muttered a little petulantly.

“Well with the way you’ve been treating this leg, you might not be able to go back even if you could—another reason you should learn to give things time.”

She let that little reality check sit and she finished up, then gave him a light slap on the calf like she hadn’t just sent a jolt of fear down his spine.

“How’s it feeling now?”

He pushed himself to sit up, feeling surprisingly relaxed for the first time since he’d arrived in this country.

“Uh, better.” It was true, his leg did feel better. But he also knew from experience that until he had a real physiotherapist to work with regularly, it was a temporary better. And until that happened, it unfortunately wasn’t actually possible to have Hen follow him around from meeting to meeting, massaging out any flare ups the second they reappeared.

“Have you been keeping up with your PT exercises?” His hesitation was enough to answer her question. He hadn’t properly done them in months. “Uh-huh. And how about anything besides running into fires and carrying heavy equipment? Any strengthening exercises? Did you ever start running again?”

“You just told me to stop running.”

Her face dropped into a glare and she dug into the tight spot she'd been working her way towards since she started massaging. Buck's entire body clenched up, unsure if it needed to get closer or further away to make it stop. It ended up trying to do both at the same time.

“Sorry! Sorry, couldn’t resist.”

She did something with her knuckles that immediately eased the pain she’d just caused, and continued to massage it as compensation. “What about walks? Just half an hour up and moving?”

Considering how active he’d been for most of his life, it felt shameful to not have anything to offer. The only walking he seemed to do these days was rushing between meetings. Or bars.

“I don’t know where to go.” It was a flimsy excuse, but at least it was something. "I'm pretty sure I'd get pelted with garbage if people saw me out for a jog." And that was probably a best case scenario.

"So don't go through town. Have you seen the grounds here? There's a ton of paths you could walk. Take your camera, too.”

That didn’t sound so bad. The palace was gorgeous, despite all the terrible people inside of it, and he had yet to take out his camera since he got there. If he was leaving anyway, he might as well get some beautiful photos out of this whole experience.

Hen gave him another light slap on the leg, this one more final.

“By the way, I found a physiotherapist for you to try. Tomorrow, after lunch. Now get out of here and go for a walk or something. Get some fresh air. Get some perspective.”

*

After leaving Hen’s office, he returned to his half-packed apartment and surveyed where things currently stood. Most of the boxes had never been unpacked anyway, and the ones that had were mostly clothes. It was the nicer stuff that he needed to hang up or send off to be pressed and cleaned properly—the things he needed every day to look put together and presentable for all of his meetings and wherever a camera might be lurking.

He’d fully intended to get right back to packing after his appointment, but maybe she had a point. Maybe he did just need some fresh air and sunshine. After four years of travel and spending more time outdoors than in, he'd spent the last three days trapped in hours and hours of awful meetings, only managing to escape at night like some kind of vampire.

Yeah, some direct sunlight would do him good. He was feeling a bit too much like Dracula these days. Was he already getting paler?

He could finish packing after getting a little exercise and some fresh air. Packing wouldn’t take very long anyway.

He dug out his camera for the first time since he arrived, grabbed a backup roll of film just in case, and headed out of the palace to explore the grounds. And he only had to stop to ask for directions twice.

The palace was laid out like a large square with a courtyard in the center that had a grand staircase. It was probably originally open to the elements, but at some point a large glass roof had been added that still let in enough sunlight for the large plants and small trees inside to thrive. It was a beautiful courtyard and if Buck were any other person, it would probably be a great place to sit and read.

But he was still Buck, the unwanted replacement for the beloved Princess Shannon, so he booked it through the space quickly and quietly to avoid getting more judgmental stares.

It was better once he got outside in the sunshine. There were a few people walking to and from the castle, and the usual rotation of palace guards making their rounds, but for the most part he was ignored and left alone.

He cut through the gravel parking lot to what looked like a path leading to the Lower Gardens, according to a little plaque. Down a long, low flight of stone steps to a little fountain on a patio tucked in amongst some larger trees. He took a couple photos, one back up the steps with the palace looming above him, and then carried on exploring. He went down some more steps, around a little bend in the path, past a statue of a classical goddess he couldn't remember the name of…

If these were the lower gardens, then what the hell did the upper look like? Where were they? Was upper referring to elevation or prestige?

Buck had grown up in a palace and been to a number of others in his life. He was used to sprawling, manicured grounds that seemed to stretch on as far as the eye could see. He was even used to palaces smack dead in the center of a city, boxed in by buildings on all sides without a scrap of nature to be seen.

This palace seemed to somehow split the difference. Buck could see the ivy-covered outer walls and the city pressing up against them, but within the walls the beauty and greenery seemed to go on forever. The paths snaked around bushes and trees, large and small statues tucked away in alcoves, winding its way down the hill. To a gate, he discovered at the bottom, and a mean-looking guard who seemed just as surprised to see Buck wandering up.

“Shit, sorry,” Buck stammered, only getting an angry and somewhat threatening look in return. “Just exploring a little bit.”

Nothing. No response.

Buck nodded, waved awkwardly, and went right back the way he came.

He couldn't even go for a stroll through a beautiful garden without being reminded of how much he was hated.

Sorry, Hen. He tried, but he couldn't wait to get out of there, beautiful garden or not. At least he got to see some genuine beauty before blowing up his entire life. Again.

Because there was no way he could run out on a very public engagement and come away unscathed.

His parents would never forgive him, he knew that much. The one thing they asked of him in the last four years and he failed at it. Which meant the press would love it, because they loved nothing more than reveling in his failure.

But where would he go?

Aid Alliance was the end goal, but he couldn’t just show up out of the blue. He’d have to wait for a placement to come up and what was he supposed to do until then? Go back to his parents’ palace and face not only their disappointment, but the gleeful mockery of the entire country? Their loveable, idiot prince couldn't even get married off right, they might even name a new shot after him.

The Buckshot. Instead of drinking it, it gets dumped on the floor because he'd probably manage to screw that up too.

Maybe he wouldn’t have to go back to his parents. Maybe he could go visit Maddie for a little bit and lay low. It’d been years since they really saw each other or talked outside of official royal events they were required to attend, it would be nice to see her.

He slapped at a thin branch overhanging the path.

Yeah, that would require she actually pick up the phone or respond to any of the countless letters he’d sent her over the years. Every move he sent her his phone number and address, hoping that would be the time she used them, and every move he was disappointed.

No, he couldn’t rely on Maddie, not with Doug and the press hanging around. He needed to come up with a more solid plan. One that not even Athena could poke holes in because experience had taught him that sneaking past her was pretty much impossible. She’d never had anyone stop him before, but she probably would if he genuinely tried to make a run for it.

He stopped at the bottom of yet another long, low set of stone steps leading back up to the palace. His leisurely stroll was turning into a much harder workout than he'd intended and he probably just undid everything Hen did to help him.

By the time he got back to the gravel packing lot his leg was throbbing enough that it took him a second to realize he came out of a different entrance than he went in. How many entrances were there to the lower gardens?

He looked back and forth along the parking lot, trying to reorient himself.

“Buck!”

Someone was waving in the distance at what might've been the place he entered, and when he squinted in the setting sun, he realized it was Christopher. He was sitting on a bench next to a man who could only be a security guard, waving at Buck like they’d been best friends for years.

Buck was not a man to leave a kid hanging, so he waved back, giving him a big smile that Christopher returned, visible even from a ways away.

Okay, maybe everyone here didn’t hate him. Christopher was technically the king, after all, and being in the king’s favor couldn’t hurt.

Buck could make this work. At least until he figured out where to go next.

*

Buck needed to get the hell out of there immediately. He was pretty sure of that fact by noon the next day, hobbling out of the grueling and painful first session with his new physiotherapist and tormenter, Armando. Fairly convinced by 2pm, halfway through a Cabinet meeting where they snidely shot down his every attempt to do anything other than exactly what Shannon would’ve done—and in case he wasn’t aware, she was not a firefighter.

Another dinner with Eddie canceled at the last minute without an explanation sealed the deal.

It shouldn’t have hurt as much as it did—he didn’t want to marry the guy either—but his leg hurt, the Cabinet were dicks, and if Eddie couldn’t even try to be civil with him for one meal together, then what was the point in even trying?

He tried to calm down and sort out his thoughts. Remember that he wasn’t the only one with stuff going on like Hen suggested. She was right, he couldn’t pack up and leave whenever things got difficult. He just needed to fix what he could and see if that helped.

The most obvious thing to fix was his leg pain; normally he would’ve taken a hot bath with epsom salts and soaked until the water went cold, but his bathroom didn’t actually have a bath. He had a very fancy shower with maybe a little too much water pressure…but unless he plugged up the drain and sat in the three whole inches that could gather before it started leaking out of the glass door, that wasn’t going to do his leg any good.

His next to-go solution was to write to Maddie. He didn’t dump all of his problems into a letter or anything, he didn’t want to do that to her. He wasn’t trying to make her feel bad or guilty. But the process of rewording his thoughts in a more positive light often helped him work through the problem. Sometimes it took a few drafts to edit out the anger and bitterness, but he never wanted to send her the ugly parts of himself.

He limped past the mostly packed boxes of his things and roughly tore a sheet of paper out of one of the palace-provided monogrammed notebooks.

Hey, Maddie…

He stopped to stare at those two words at the top of the page. His handwriting was even messier than usual, and it made it look aggressive. He didn’t want to be aggressive. He was never aggressive with Maddie.

She was out there with her husband (however Buck personally felt about the guy), adored by the papers, saving lives, and doing exactly what she wanted with her carefully protected privacy. She didn’t need her little loser brother dumping his own issues all over her because he couldn’t do anything right. He couldn’t even get married right, and the hard part of finding a person to marry had been done for him.

He put the pen down and tried massaging some of the soreness out of his leg instead. Maybe it would have a stress ball effect on his mood.

Unsurprisingly, it didn’t. It just made his leg hurt more.

He shoved back from the desk and stretched out his leg instead. There was no point in trying to write to Maddie; no amount of drafts could filter out the negativity this time. Not even Chimney could spin this experience into a positive.

This palace sucked. The country sucked. The people sucked.

Buck was done.

He should just do what Eddie clearly wanted and leave. Take off in the middle of the night and never come back. It wouldn’t be hard to leave. The guards probably wouldn’t even try to stop him, they’d just be glad he was gone.

Aside from the few outfits he’d worn the last couple days, his things were packed so no one would have to waste time on that. He could just…go. Send a forwarding address once he got settled. Even if they threw out everything he left behind, there wasn’t anything in there that he would miss. All he really needed was his camera bag and a jacket; he could figure everything else out after.

Hell, his team would probably be grateful to be free of the constant headaches the engagement was causing.

Bobby’s job and title were all but unnecessary; what did Buck need a chief of staff for when his “staff” was all of three other people, and his biggest responsibility these days was signing off on wedding decorations?

Athena’s security experience was being wasted since Buck wasn’t even allowed out of the palace during daylight hours, not to mention she was separated from her kids until at least the end of the school year. And that was only if Michael decided to follow his ex-wife to a new country.

The same went for Hen, now forced to rely on nightly calls to her wife and son back home until things settled.

He’d even cut off Chimney from the professional network he’d spent over a decade building and practically crippled his career. How could he effectively manage Buck’s PR when he was facing down a country of journalists that seemed hellbent on making Buck look as terrible as possible? It didn’t matter how charming he was or what kind of response he put out, it would always be twisted into something awful.

There wasn’t a single positive to Buck being there, for anyone involved. Even his own fiancé seemed miserable wherever they were forced into the same room.

Before he could second guess himself, he quickly scrawled a note on his scrapped letter to Maddie explaining that he was leaving and would get in contact once he was settled somewhere. He took off his engagement ring to leave behind, threw on the first jacket he saw, grabbed his camera bag, and left his stuffy and lifeless apartment for the last time.

The large painting of the snotty aristocrat directly across from his door looked down on him, judgingly. He couldn’t help pulling a face at it before turning to head for the exit.

“Buck!”

He immediately stuttered to a stop, his sneakers squeaking on the overly polished floor—so much for stealth.

He turned to find Christopher making his way towards him on his crutches. He was in different pajamas, this time with dinosaurs on them, but still in the same slippers, his curls still just a little bit wild from a pillow. Another late night joyride.

“Uh, what’s up, Christopher?” Buck tried to subtly tuck his camera bag out of sight. “Can’t sleep?”

Christopher shook his head quickly. “I can’t stop thinking about everything.”

Buck was intimately familiar with what that felt like. “Yeah? What’s on your mind?”

Chrisophter kept moving, heading towards the kitchen, so Buck matched his pace and followed. His clean getaway was pretty much ruined, and he wasn’t about to leave the poor kid alone with his thoughts at eleven at night.

“Everything,” Christopher repeated with weight in his tone. “School was hard today and I can’t get it out of my head.”

“Anything in particular?”

“Andrew.” He said it with the same disgust that most kids reserved for broccoli. He did not elaborate.

“Andrew, huh?” Buck sifted through a few possibilities of who Andrew could be. It didn’t seem likely that the king would have a school bully, but kids existed in a world of their own. Stranger things had happened. “Well, what do you usually do to get your mind off of school?”

“Talk to my dad. But he’s asleep.”

Judging by the shitty attitude and the permanent shadows under Eddie’s eyes, yeah, he could probably use it. Maybe he’d be less of a tetchy dick after a full night’s sleep.

Buck nodded solemnly. “I see the problem. But lucky for you, I know where Bobby hides all the best midnight snacks—including the chocolate croissants.”

That seemed to get Christopher’s mind off of politics as his face lit up at the mention of chocolate.

Sorry, Eddie, Buck mentally shrugged at giving a child late night sugar and butter. It probably wasn’t a good idea, but that wasn’t his problem. Only one Diaz wanted him around, so that was the Diaz Buck was going to side with. As far as he was concerned, Eddie was officially the enemy, and sabotaging his parenting even just the slightest bit was really helping to improve Buck’s mood.

Christopher made himself comfortable at the prep table like before while Buck headed to the industrial-sized fridge and opened both doors wide with a bit of fanfare.

“Now what are we feeling tonight?” He scanned the contents, which were a little sparse for a kitchen under Bobby’s control. But he’d been there for less than a week, he was still amassing his power and stockpile of ingredients.

“Can you make that drink?”

It took Buck a second to remember what Christopher was talking about; the steamed and spiced chamomile Bobby made the last time they ended up in the kitchen together in the middle of the night.

Buck made a bit of a show of considering the question. “Well Bobby doesn’t normally share his secret recipes with anyone, but let’s see what we can do.”

He took off his jacket with flair and tossed it to the end of the prep table. He rolled up his sleeves with a few sharp flicks, then rubbed his hands together in preparation.

Bobby didn’t intentionally share recipes, but he did like to give mini lectures about his ingredients to anyone within hearing range so Buck could probably piece together the recipe. It was tea and milk, how hard could it be?

Not quite as easy as he expected. He and Christopher were about the same level of helpful in the kitchen, so between the two of them they managed to come up with something…loosely approximating Bobby’s warm spiced chamomile recipe. At the very least, it had most of the same ingredients.

Kind of.

They way overshot on the spices. Bobby’s carefully balanced recipe was left in the dust a long way back, but Christopher liked cinnamon, and he thought grating nutmeg made it look like a brain, and he wanted more star anise floating on the surface.

It was honestly disgusting by the time they dished it out into mugs, but the way Christopher laughed brightly when Buck pulled a completely involuntary face after each sip made it worth it. Sort of. He started to fake drink it after the first few sips because it really did taste like they dumped potpourri into milk several days before and let it steep. With some dirt added for texture.

Even Christopher seemed to agree, because he’d become suspiciously focused on using his spoon to push the cinnamon stick around the mug and hadn’t taken a sip in a while.

“Had a feeling I’d find you here.”

They looked up to Eddie coming through the door, dressed again in a t-shirt and sweats. He still looked exhausted, but the urgency and worry of the first time he found them in the kitchen was gone.

His eyes caught Buck’s briefly as he approached, a little wary after their last meeting with Martha and the blatant avoidance after. Buck gave him a bit of an awkward smile that he hoped conveyed the intended message of be cool; it was the middle of the night, Christopher was right there, no need to get weird about things. Buck could be civil if Eddie could too.

Either it worked and Buck was shockingly good at communicating through smiles, or Eddie was hoping for the same.

Christopher didn’t even bother pretending to feel guilty, for sneaking out or getting caught. He gave his dad his cheesiest smile and Eddie, as Buck had come to expect when his son was involved, melted.

He shook his head good naturedly and grabbed a stool from the counter to settle down across from them. It was basically the same height as the prep table, so when he sat and propped his foot up on the crossbar, he smacked his knee into the edge with a dull clang.

He smiled at Christopher’s laugh and leaned forward, resting his elbow on his freshly bruised knee, and propped his chin up to fix his son with a look.

“So what do I have to bribe you with to get you to stay in bed, hm?”

Buck was pretty sure he was trying to pin his son with a mock glare, but he was so tired it just looked like he couldn’t really keep his eyes open. His blinks were a little too slow to be convincing. And really, it wasn’t fair that he could look soft and cute at night while being such a dick during the day.

Christopher made a show of thinking it over. “Another plant book.”

“You just got a plant book.”

“And I’m almost done with it!”

“Well, I told you to pace yourself,” Eddie shrugged like Christopher was out of luck, and then immediately undermined himself by asking, “What kind of plant book do you want next?”

“Spices!”

Eddie’s eyes flicked to their mugs, to the stove, and the collection of bottles and herbs scattered across the counter.

“Can’t imagine what brought that on.” He looked between the two of them with suspicion, his eyes lingering on Buck just a beat longer. “What have you been cooking up in here?”

Buck used his hand to cover his smile as Christopher pushed his mug across the table. Yeah, a heads up would probably be the mature way to go, but he was still angry about earlier and feeling a little petty.

“Try it, Dad!” Christopher chirped, and looked back at Buck with a very obvious mischievous smile.

Eddie looked down at the mug, up at them, then back down.

It definitely looked…different than Bobby’s. While his were served with a tasteful garnish of a single star anise pod resting on a bed of steamed milk foam, their rendition had no foam, a lot of visible spices, multiple star anise pods because Christopher liked the shape, a broken cinnamon stick floating like a dead log, and a sprig of rosemary—for color.

Buck and Christopher looked at each other, both pretty bad at hiding their laughs as Eddie took a brave sip from his son’s mug. His entire face spasmed briefly, but he did a pretty good job of schooling his expression, even if he didn’t seem to be able to completely close his mouth on the flavor as he pushed the mug back over.

“I think we could do a book on spices, yeah,” he said, his voice a little wheezy. “That’s—” He tried to suppress a cough. “That’s a lot of clove.”

Christopher had excitedly explained to Buck that his class had used cloves to make patterns in oranges in December, and it smelled so good, so they had to add cloves! And who was Buck to argue with that logic?

“It’s my favorite,” Christopher announced, as if he hadn’t declared nutmeg and cinnamon his favorites as well not fifteen minutes ago. Then he turned to Buck. “What’s your favorite plant?”

Buck took a second to think, quickly filing through every plant he could possibly think of on the spot. Of all the left field questions he’d been asked throughout his life in the spotlight, that was one he didn’t have an old pre-planned response to fall back on.

“I like oak trees,” he finally decided, and Christopher looked disappointed by the answer, so obviously Buck had no option but to defend his choice. “Acorns are cute, and you can put the tops on your fingers like little hats!”

Christopher wasn’t convinced, giving him a surprisingly adept side eye through his glasses. “I guess…”

"Okay, then what's your favorite? And it's gotta be good if you're judging mine."

"Narcissus poeticus," Christopher said immediately, stumbling a little over the Latin. He didn't translate, but he was clearly looking for a reaction of some kind.

Buck blinked and looked over at Eddie, who shrugged.

“He definitely didn't get that from me."

“His favorite plant is boring too,” Christopher said with an eyeroll, like it somehow explained Eddie’s ignorance. “Plain old daffodils.”

“I thought you liked daffodils.” Eddie frowned at the side of his son’s head, maybe feigning his offense but also maybe a little bit genuinely offended at the judgment. Buck could relate. He hadn’t actually felt that strongly about oak trees until he got judged for liking them—now he was committed and willing to defend them to his death.”

“They’re fine.” Christopher quickly took a long drink of his chamomile spice bomb before he could be asked another question. Even he winced at the flavor, and Eddie grinned.

“Okay, you’re getting very confident about your opinions here,” Buck said, narrowing his eyes and playing it up a little to make Christopher laugh. “I’m going to need to see some credentials if I’m going to trust your expertise, so why don’t you take me around the gardens sometime and prove it. Show me the best plant we have here—and you have to tell me why.”

It was only after he said it that Buck remembered that not even an hour ago, he’d been practically on his way out the door, never to return. His jacket and camera bag were two feet away from him, set to the side on the prep table and out of the splash zone, and here he was making future plans.

But the way Christopher’s eyes immediately lit up behind his glasses in excitement, he couldn’t find it in him to regret that offer. The kid whipped around to look at his dad so fast, Buck was surprised his glasses didn’t fall off his face, even with the strap holding them on.

“Can I, Dad?”

Eddie only hesitated a second, briefly glancing up at Buck before his helpless Christopher smile came through. “Sure, why not.”

“Can you come, too?”

The smile turned a little strained, but he didn’t let it fall. “Depends on my schedule, buddy, but we’ll see what I can do.”

They stayed up chatting for a little while longer until Christopher finally yawned, and Eddie seized his chance to persuade him to go back to bed. This time when he picked up his son to carry him back, Buck grabbed Christopher’s crutches with his own jacket and camera and followed him back down that familiar hallway.

They stopped at the door next to Buck’s, with only a marble bust of an old man with a truly amazing head of curls to match his impressive mustache between them. Christopher reached out to pat it fondly while Eddie got their door unlocked, and as Buck handed off the crutches, he heard him sleepily mumble, “Night, Marvin.”

The plaque beneath the bust said his name was George.

Eddie nodded goodnight to Buck, who nodded back, and they entered their respective apartments well after midnight.

Buck tossed his jacket over the back of the sofa and put his camera back on the desk. He crumpled up his hurriedly written goodbye note and tossed it in the trash. Obviously he couldn’t just leave after promising Christopher he’d go on a garden tour with him.

If he stood still and listened closely, he could still hear the soft rumble of Eddie’s voice through the wall between them.

*

Buck spent all of breakfast the next day dodging Bobby’s knowing gaze. It wouldn’t have been hard for him to piece together what happened in the kitchen the night before from all the debris Buck and Christopher had left behind, especially now that they were night kitchen repeat offenders.

And if Buck left half his muffin and precious coffee behind to get out of there before Bobby could initiate another coordinated Clear Out Protocol for a Talk, no one would be able to prove it. He really did have a meeting to get to. It was the most boring meeting on agriculture he’d ever attended in his life that somehow lasted right up until lunchtime, and he regretted not skipping it halfway through, but no one could accuse him of lying to avoid one-on-one Bobby.

By the end of the meeting, he did regret not staying for the talk. He practically bolted from the room the second the presentation ended and kept a brisk pace as he tried to keep ahead of any staffers who might try to call him back. He was bored, he was starving, he had a giant binder of farming information he was pretty sure he’d never need in his life, he needed to get the hell out of there.

“Buck!”

He almost groaned at the man interrupting his escape attempt, but he recognized that voice. It was lower this time, but it seemed as though the Diazes had a very specific way of calling his name in hallways.

Somewhat reluctantly, Buck stopped and turned to Eddie approaching with his own large binder.

The palace really had a binder problem.

Buck wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to have this interaction. Sure, they’d done alright in the middle of the night and parted on mostly genial terms, but there’d been a seven year old present as a buffer, and Christopher was nowhere to be seen. He had no way to predict how this might end.

Eddie stopped with a few feet between them.

“Hey, I just wanted to—” He sighed a little and looked just past Buck. “I’m sorry about the thing with Martha. What I said…it wasn’t cool. I know you completely uprooted your life to come here, and I shouldn’t have blown up like that.”

That…wasn’t what Buck was expecting him to say, and he was a little at a loss. People didn’t generally just apologize to him like that, at least not genuinely. He was a prince, so he got a lot of instinctive, panicked, or bitter apologies that sounded like they were forced out under duress, but an actual, genuine apology from someone who had every authority to not even bother?

He wasn’t sure how to react.

“Don’t worry about it,” he tried. “I know you’ve got a lot going on.”

He was guessing, but Eddie seemed busy and stressed whenever he saw him. He desperately wanted to ask why this engagement had even been offered if Eddie really didn’t want it, but the busy hallway, surrounded by aides and staffers rushing past and keeping an eye on them, definitely wasn’t the place for that conversation.

“Still. I should keep it together better than that. I shouldn’t take it out on you.” He bit his lip for a second, looking unsure if he should continue. Then he explained quietly, “Shannon—my wife picked out most of that. They’re her favorite flowers, colors, the damn napkin rings she spent three months choosing—” He cut himself off with a shake of his head like he was getting back on track. “I wasn’t expecting it.”

So Hen hadn’t been too far off with her take on the situation.

“Seriously, it’s cool. I get it.”

“But I mean, if you like any of it, we can use it. This is your wedding too, so…” He waved a hand at Buck, who found himself oddly touched that Eddie was even pretending to care about his opinion on the matter. No one else had so far.

“It was a lot of gold,” he said with a friendly grimace, and the corner of Eddie’s mouth twitched. “Honestly, it’s not really my thing, so I guess we’re both going to be miserable at our wedding.”

“Well, she can’t take both of us, we can always steal her binders.”

It was the first pass at a joke Buck had ever heard from Eddie. The first glimpse at his personality beyond stoic regent and dad. He suddenly wanted to see what other secret traits he could coax out of his fiancé.

“You really think she doesn’t have multiple copies?” Martha seemed like the type of person to keep backups in a locked, fireproof vault at a second location.

“Hoping, while knowing she definitely does.”

“Sir?” An aide approached—possibly named Greg but maybe Craig—hesitant to interrupt them. Buck might have looked at him a little sharply because they’d been getting along. That could’ve been reasonably described as banter. “You have a call with uh…”

He made a gesture around his head that seemed unflattering, but Buck had no idea what it meant. Eddie understood it perfectly and started, glancing at his watch and swearing.

“I’ve gotta—” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder and Buck nodded with a quick wave goodbye.

“Oh hey,” he called before Eddie got very far away. “I don’t know when you and Christopher are free for our garden tour, but you can let him know that I’m ready and waiting to be wowed by his superior plant knowledge.”

Eddie blinked at him for a second, then got the tiniest hint of his Christopher smile in the corner of his lips. “Yeah, he’s really excited for it. He got out all of his books to brush up.” He stepped out of the way of a couple staffers rushing past, and ignored the aide at his shoulder, practically vibrating with the need to interrupt and get him moving again. “He’s free after five the next couple of days, but I’m pretty slammed with meetings. I can see if—”

“I can just take him,” Buck offered, before realizing that Eddie might be trying to avoid that. “I mean, if you’re cool with it. I don’t want to—”

“No, no, that’s…” Eddie shook his head briefly. “That’s fine, I just wasn’t sure if…” He gestured vaguely, leaving Buck to try and guess what the hell that meant.

The aide opened his mouth to interrupt. Buck ignored him.

“I wanted to hang out with him?” he tried, and Eddie made a face that might’ve been agreement. “Why wouldn’t I? He’s a super cool kid who knows the coolest plants.”

This time Eddie’s smile was a little bigger. “I think so, but not everyone wants to hang out with a seven year old, you know?”

“Well I do, so let him know that he just needs to name the time, and I am there.” He leaned in a little. “And my expectations are not going to be easily met, he was setting the bar pretty high.”

Eddie rolled his eyes but he was still smiling. "Yeah, I'll pass that along."

He finally started moving in the direction the aide was subtly moving in, and he breathed a sigh of relief when he actually followed him this time. The last thing Buck heard was Eddie asking, who is this with? and the aide launching into a very unflattering description of a diplomat Buck was pretty sure he’d met at some point.

*

They planned their garden adventure for two days later, immediately after Christopher finished with his after school work. By the time Buck got out of his last meeting, got changed into jeans, and got his camera loaded with a fresh roll of film, Christopher was already waiting for him. He was seated on one of the benches in the central courtyard, Agent Williams on one side and his governess, Claudia on the other.

Agent Williams was Christopher’s palace security guard and perpetual shadow. From the second Christopher stepped outside of the private wing to the moment he got in the car to go to school, Agent Williams was within a few steps of him at all times. The only time he wasn’t glued to his side, Athena had explained, was during the school day when a larger security team took over.

Eddie wasn’t with them, so Buck assumed he hadn’t been able to get the couple hours free after all. The last time Buck saw him, he looked like he was fighting desperately to stay awake in a meeting about social security.

Buck had just enough time before being spotted to snap a quick photo of them, and then another as Christopher waved to him.

Claudia stood up as he approached, checking her watch. “I’ll be back to meet you right here in an hour. Have fun, Christopher.” She dipped her head in a little bow and hurried off. Buck couldn’t help but notice the abrupt shift in the air around them or the way Christopher relaxed once she was gone.

“Um.” He gestured after her, looking between Christopher and Agent Williams for an explanation.

“She doesn’t like plants,” Christopher explained with a tone that said exactly what he thought about that. Williams grinned to himself.

“Well I do, so I hope you studied up, because I’m going to have a lot of questions,” Buck warned, and let Christopher set the pace as they headed towards the elusive upper gardens. They were on the other side of the palace, and seemed to follow a gentle slope up, so that answered Buck’s question about the name.

Just like the lower gardens, the garden was the polar opposite of the sprawling fields his parents had forcibly manicured into soulless, precise shapes and patterns to fit their meticulous vision. They carved nature into the image of manufactured perfection and kept it tightly reined in; everything was symmetrical and orderly, straight lines and rectangles spreading out across perfectly flat grounds that left nowhere to hide. Any sign that a living being had passed through them was gone the next day once the team of gardeners did their daily morning maintenance.

These gardens cascaded down the hill with plenty of trees and bushes that created private little alcoves with benches and tables tucked away inside of them. The paths sometimes had flagstones marking the way, but often disappeared and left the way to be created and maintained by the people who wandered through. The little flights of steps were old stone built into the hill, with hundreds of years of footprints worn into them. There wasn’t a single straight line to be seen; the gardens were wild and natural, but still meticulously cared for.

It felt like a hidden refuge, far away from civilization despite being able to see the upper floors of the palace above them through the trees.

Christopher guided him through the garden with the familiarity of someone who’d grown up there. He knew what paths were difficult to navigate with his crutches and easily redirected to find another route to all of his favorite places and plants, the coolest fountains tucked away in groves—he seemed especially set on showing off a really creepy statue practically shunned to a corner and walled off by dense bushes. (A forest nymph from a local legend, Agent Williams explained, that the queen had relocated the second she was crowned because it gave her nightmares as a kid.)

But even as he chattered on, firing off barely related fun facts in that little kid kind of way, Buck couldn’t help but notice that Christopher was a lot less enthusiastic than he had been that night in the kitchen, when he’d been judging their favorite plants with a gleam in his eye.

A shared glance and a shrug from Williams confirmed it, so the next time they happened upon a bench, Buck made a bit of a show out of being worn out and plopped down. Williams hung back, mostly out of earshot, but just close enough that Buck could hear that he was speaking with the rest of the security team over his radio. Even if they weren’t in sight, there were probably a dozen of them scattered through the garden.

Even within the palace gates, the king was heavily monitored.

“Hey, is everything okay?” Buck asked once Christopher was settled down next to him. “I mean, we’ve been out here for half an hour and you haven’t made fun of oaks or acorns once.”

Christopher shrugged and twisted around to gently poke at the wall of flowers behind them.

“You don’t have to tell me. But I know that when I’m feeling sad, talking about it helps a lot, so if you want to, I’ll listen.”

It took a moment before Christopher finally muttered, “Claudia says plants don’t matter.”

“Plants don’t matter?” Buck scrunched up his face in disgust. “Well what the hell does Claudia know?” Then quickly tacked on, “Uh, don’t say hell.”

Without even a twitch of a smile, Christopher answered, “A lot. She helps me with school.”

“And she doesn’t want you to learn about botany?” Buck had plenty of not great teachers in his life—many who practically begged him to stop asking questions and just shut up and read the assigned material—but they’d never outright told him a subject just didn’t matter. Dagmar, his own governess as a child, had been the one to encourage him to channel some of that burning need for answers into reading books.

“She says I won’t need it to be king.”

And maybe Buck would regret this advice later, but something inside of him cracked.

“Forget Claudia, and read what you find interesting. You have plenty of time to learn political science and…constitutional history.” Christopher wrinkled his nose at just the mention of them. “Yeah, exactly. So you read what you’re interested in and don’t let anyone tell you what you can and can’t learn. Everyone needs a hobby, even kings.”

Christopher looked up at that, his eyes wide and magnified behind his glasses. “What’s a hobby?”

Buck faltered at that, and judging by the badly hidden grin on Agent Williams’ face, he got a lot of these kinds of questions in a day.

“Um, I guess it's something you enjoy learning about and doing, even though you don’t have to. Like plants and gardening, or baking, or…model trains…” he tacked lamely when he couldn’t think of another example.

A moment to process that answer, then, “What’s your hobby?”

“Photography. I really like taking photos.”

Christopher looked like he was weighing whether or not that was a cool enough hobby, which took a certain kind of seven year old confidence considering he only just found out what a hobby was.

“Don’t judge me yet, hang on.” Buck reached into his bag and pulled out his camera, took off the lens cap, and snapped a quick picture of Christopher’s dubious expression because he couldn’t resist. The kid was seriously cute. “Want to try?”

Christopher carefully took the camera like he was being given something priceless and listened with intense concentration as Buck briefly explained what each dial and button did, how to focus by turning the lens. Then he looked up and around them.

“What do I take a picture of?”

“Whatever you want.”

Christopher screwed up his mouth as he thought, eyes wandering from one thing to the next until he raised the camera and aimed it at Buck. A second later, the shutter clicked and he grinned.

"Can I take another one?"

They spent a good amount of time wandering around while Christopher used up the rest of the roll of film. He took pictures of everything from Buck and Agent Williams, to his favorite flowers and what looked like a pile of rabbit poop. But at least his mood had turned around, and his toothy smile was what really mattered.

Man, this kid was cute.

"I'm glad you came, Buck,” he said suddenly, sitting next to him in the grass while Buck showed him how to insert another roll of film.

"How could I miss it?"

Christopher shrugged. "My dad said you might be too busy."

"Nah, I'll always have time for you. You're the first friend I made here.” He gave him a light nudge, but it didn’t get the smile or laugh he’d been hoping for. “You okay?

He thought they’d been doing good and having a fun time.

Christopher shrugged again, pulling at a small weed among a patch of daffodils that the gardeners had missed and then smoothing the dirt back over the hole it left. But he also kept glancing over towards Buck like he was just waiting for him to press him on it. As a former child who desperately wanted attention but didn’t know how to outright ask for it, Buck knew this game well. He wasn’t about to leave Christopher hanging.

“You know, I won’t tell if you don’t want me to.” He held out his pinky. “We’re friends, remember?”

Christopher looked at his pinky for a second, debating. “Best friends?”

And oh, Buck remembered that specific type of lonely isolation. Seeing kids in movies and tv running off to have adventures with friends their own age, but never having that kind of connection in real life. Maddie did her best, but it wasn’t the same. By the time he became aware of best friends even being a thing that most kids had, she was in the completely different universe of being a teenager and a princess in the spotlight. She was a role model, while he was longing for friends to ride bikes and have adventures with.

He couldn’t give Christopher best friends his own age, or remove that wall of royalty and fame that kept everyone at a distance out of precaution. But he could be there for him and try to help him through what had been the worst years of Buck’s life with hopefully minimal emotional scars.

Buck wiggled his pinky a little bit to make him smile. “Best friends.”

Christopher hooked his pinky around Buck’s and squeezed. The smile faded a little and he confessed quietly, “I miss my dad. He’s always too busy.”

While he hadn’t seen his own parents too much growing up, despite living in the same palace, Buck also learned very quickly that their attention wasn’t something to crave. With it came stiff, formal portraits and lectures on his posture and behavior, superficial fixes for the deep cracks that had formed in their family. It hadn’t taken long for Buck to learn to seek out his sister instead.

The brief glimpses Buck got of their relationship indicated that Eddie was the polar opposite to his parents—but he was incredibly busy all the same. Christopher didn’t have a Maddie to fill the work hours, but maybe he could have a Buck.

“Well, I know he wants to be with you.” Even while he was pissed at Eddie, that much was obvious. He adored his son in a way Buck had never really seen up close in real life. “He’s just got a big job he has to do.”

“A dumb job,” Christopher muttered under his breath. Buck wasn’t sure if he was supposed to hear it or not. “He’s in charge, why can’t he leave when he wants?”

Buck squinted at the distance for a second, not exactly sure how to explain palace politics and the responsibility of leadership to a seven year old. But then, that seven year old had grown up in a palace and was going to be the reigning king in about a decade. He probably already had a general idea.

“He might be in charge, but that means a lot of people rely on him to be available to help them. He can’t just take the day off and ignore them when they need him.”

“I hate his job,” Christopher said quietly, carefully rearranging some flowers that were tangling together as they grew. “I never want to be king.”

And Buck…couldn’t tell him he was wrong about that. He certainly never wanted to be king, or even really a royal at all, and everything about his parents and his life so far told him that he’d had the right instinct.

“Tell you what,” Buck inched a little closer to him, like they were making secret plans no one could overhear. “How about we make your dad the best bouquet we can, and then you can tell him about everything in it when he gets done with all of his stupid work for the day. You can bring the garden to him. Sound good?”

It took a second while he thought it over, but Christopher’s face brightened up with a smile. “I already know what to put in it!”

And before Buck could ask, he was clambering up to his feet and getting his crutches situated, before heading back towards the patch of daffodils.

*

Their evening in the garden and little heart-to-heart led to Buck and Christopher spending a lot more time together in the days that followed. They often found each other in the hallway, in the kitchen, one time in the small library of the private wing, and Buck never hesitated to drop what he was doing to sit down for a visit.

Because even with his jam-packed schedule of classes and tutoring with Claudia, and despite Eddie’s very obvious best efforts to spend as much time with him as he possibly could squeeze into a day—Christopher was lonely. There were no other kids in the palace, and with the absurdly tight security restrictions, none of his school friends could visit, nor could he go to their houses. He was constantly surrounded by people, but only adults who were only there to do a job and didn’t have time for anything beyond that job.

That was a type of lonely Buck knew all too well from his own childhood, especially as Maddie got older and had less and less time to spend with him, until eventually she was gone. But Buck wasn’t going anywhere, that much he’d decided. Even if he and Eddie never made it past tentative, tolerant acquaintances, Buck wasn’t going to leave Christopher to his loneliness. No kid deserved that, but especially not Christopher.

But even on the Buck and Eddie front, things were improving. They weren't falling in love by any means, but they were cautiously approaching something close to what Buck might consider friends. Or at the very least, work friends.

Commiserating eye contact in Cabinet meetings turned into smirks and quick eyerolls. That became walking together to their next meetings while quietly mocking the Cabinet’s more irritating members. (They were all irritating, they all got mocked.)

And as their tentative friendship warmed up, Eddie was more and more open to Buck and Christopher intentionally hanging out together when he wasn’t available, not just running into each other. Agent Williams was always around when they left the private wing so there was always that extra layer of security and reassurance, but it wasn’t a trust that Buck took lightly. Especially when his time with Christopher was often the brightest part of his days at the palace.

And maybe it was wishful thinking, but as they spent more time together, Buck was pretty sure Christopher seemed happier too.

They met in the garden a couple more times and Christopher brought his favorite books so they could identify even more plants, and both times, he left with a bouquet of new plants to tell his dad about.

The best day, when Christopher was most excited and full of life, was the day Eddie managed to clear a couple hours at the end of his schedule and join them. He followed along with a soft smile on his face, nodding and gently correcting as Christopher read descriptions aloud from one of his books in a way that made Buck think it was probably part of their nightly routine. When pressed, he grinned and led the way to his favorite spot in the garden: one of the secluded groves that had a fair amount of daffodils surrounding a stone bench.

The three of them stayed there until the sun went down and it started to get a little too chilly. They tried to stay out longer, but Christopher started yawning and Agent Williams pointedly cleared his throat. So Buck gathered up the books they’d brought and Christopher’s crutches, and Eddie gathered up Christopher, who was practically asleep and swimming in Eddie’s sweater, and they reluctantly headed back up to the palace.

It was that night, as Buck climbed into bed feeling happy and satisfied, that he realized it’d been a few weeks since he even thought about leaving again.